r i g h t  h a n d  p o i n t i n g

short fiction  short poetry  short commentary  short..uh..art

 

 

     
  Famished

Allan Peterson
 

 


I had been like the heron that lets down its wrists.
You would say shoulders, but are hands,
and the primaries are the parallels of fingers,
the inverse of bird in the hand.
Appearing helpless in the stance of I give up,
I was a shrug with wet feathers. I had slipperiness for food.
I watched a great blue spend hours with a fish head
too big for it, but would not give up.
It was a famished man trying to swallow a cannonball,
not the lakes, but the likes of which I had never seen.

 

 

 

  

Allan Peterson lives in Gulf Breeze, Florida He the author of a book, Anonymous Or, and two chapbooks, Stars On A Wire and Small Charities.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review, Many Mountains Moving, West Wind, Arts & Letters, Northwest Review, Jabbwerwock, Belleview Literary Review, Agni, Blackbird, Drexel Online Journal, Stickman Review, The King's English, Story South, Typo, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, Mid America Review, and Octopus.  He was the 2002 winner of the Arts & Letters Poetry Prize and has been the recipient of fellowships by the Florida Arts Council and the NEA.

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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