Paulann Petersen is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University whose poems have appeared in many publications including Poetry, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, and Wilderness Magazine. She has three chapbooks–Under the Sign of a Neon Wolf, The Animal Bride, and Fabrication. Her first full-length collection of poems, The Wild Awake, was published by Confluence Press in 2002. A second, Blood-Silk, poems about Turkey, was published by Quiet Lion Press of Portland in 2004. A Bride of Narrow Escape was published by Cloudbank Books as part of its Northwest Poetry Series in 2006. Her most recent collection, Kindle, was published by Mountains and Rivers Press in 2008. The following poems appear her with the poet’s permission. Visit Petersen’s website to learn more about her work.

A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE
       from Kindle

Seen close enough,
tungsten atoms make
a starburst. Farthest galaxies,
a prick of light.

Tungsten traces lay inside
the tomato I ate this morning.
Its globe held in one hand,
I took it into me

bite by bite. Juice and seed
smeared my chin.
Love apple.
Small, red sun.

Our galaxy lies inside
a cosmos waiting
to swallow me whole.
Night coming–fast.

TRAVELER
       from Kindle

Cast ashore
like some fleck of wood
brought here from afar
by the sea,

you reel–stunned
to breathe this reek of
strange urine, strange perfume
thick in saffron heat.

Here you are, foreign one,
familiar with only
the moon and stars,
a cloud-shaped sky,

the lidless eye of sun.
Take heart: only what floats
could be carried
as far as you’ve come.

AS FALL DAYS CONTINUE THEIR ONWARD COUNT
       from Kindle

I wrap myself in a garment of summer
that carries me back
to the huge garden plot
I tended for years, then left behind
years ago. Far away,

three hundred miles south
and east of here, I carry
a hoe into rows of sweet corn–
chopping at chickweed, purslane, quackgrass,
at sprouts of plantain. By hand I pull out

the interlopers hiding against
inch-thick stalks, then take a rake
to the path of soft dirt
between each row. Rake and step,
rake and step. But not

heedful enough. I have walked
on the earth I so carefully smoothed.
The corn is in tassel. Pollen drifts, thick–
yellow filling each footprint.
Who knows what grows there now.

A TAMING
       from A Bride of Narrow Escape

The bride across the street,
sleek-haired, her fingernails
dipped in red–ran to me flushed
from screaming, awry with fear.
A bird was thrashing, flinging against
pale walls, the picture window,
draperies of her living room.
She was stop-heart
afraid of its frenzied and slow
disintegration, the feathers loosed
and wafting, its refusal
to find the open door.

Her rough boned, no-longer-a-bride
neighbor, I would catch what she couldn’t
bring her finely wrought self
to touch. I would carry it outside,
buoy it home to leafy branches,
into a swath of expanding air.
My fingers long, hands big enough
for its wings to stay safely
pressed along its sides–
heart beating as wildly against
my startled palms
as wilderness itself
held still.

FERAL
       from The Wild Awake

I bleed in a dream.
My hand, clamped
around the muzzle of threat,
lets go. Those milky
teeth are free,
and I bleed

with no reason
for fear. It’s just
color, really
and the lightheaded
reel at the sight
of that color: rush of

wild poppies. Two, three,
a whole rash field,
strew of wet silk
then a fine dust
floating from one black
throat to another.

I let blood in a dream.
No loss, no loss–
it’s merely a step toward
waking, a trail of scent
I leave for each
dream animal to follow.