The God of Peonies For Alan Michael Parker
The god of peonies garrisons all objects of desire, doles out
indulgence after indulgence only when the mood strikes, which is
to say: seldom. He knows data must be entered, drudgery begets
drudgery, we don’t have to like it but we’d better get used to numb
fingers at daylight’s faint end. Red-stained corks and unwrapped
petals, our little wants soothed, his caprice generous for once,
we thank. Genuflect in the bottle shop aisle, merlots upon malbecs,
face distorted in the glass bend, all squished nose and giant teeth,
my hand a permanent open curve. In the flower market, every stem’s
a beckoning finger, blooms nod his whisper, answering every quiet need.
|
|
| Erin Keane is the author of The Gravity Soundtrack, a full-length collection of poems forthcoming from WordFarm in 2007, and The One-Hit Wonders (Snark Publishing), a chapbook of poems about and inspired by rock & roll. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in or are forthcoming in many magazines, including Nimrod, Phoebe, Spoon River Poetry Review, Sou'wester, Poems & Plays, New Southerner, Now & Then and Louisville Magazine. A recipient of a fellowship from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, she directs the InKY Reading Series in Louisville, Ky. Keane also writes a blog for Velocity and serves on the editorial boards of New Southerner and The Heartland Review. She teaches sophomores about Pop Music in American Literature at Bellarmine University and high school creative writing workshops for the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts. Keane earned her MFA in creative writing at Spalding University and won the 2003 National Society of Arts and Letters Kentucky Chapter prize for literature. |