for Melisa Gregory & Steven Fisher
There was never enough
evidence of color. The night
was an open mouth
without a tongue, the dried
stump an instrument
of secret. In the mind—
never enough wood, never enough
stones to build the fire. It was
a forest that caught light
only thanks to the moon
two families in black gathered
to grieve beneath. Plain stunt
of the mouth, home to its senseless
dark—sounds, footsteps strung
across the spring. This is why
we no longer remember
which bodies in the dirt
are our bodies in the dirt—
though still we may love
even after laying, below
temperature & life, on the dewed steps
of the trailer. Forever
aimless, months stir
wildfires across the acres
one day we may have owned.
Peter LaBerge is the author of the chapbooks Makeshift Cathedral (YesYes Books, 2017) and Hook (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). His work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades, Sixth Finch, and Southern Indiana Review, among others. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the Bucknell University Stadler Center for Poetry and the founder and editor-in-chief of The Adroit Journal. He lives in Philadelphia, where he is an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.