Otology

by Allan Peterson

A program on the loss of hearing
showed some twenty inner ears

removed and gridded nicely
on a sheet so connections

between listening and the ocean
might be established

along with water off the house walls
flies from the ointments

the beeping machines that write
the heart's monotonous letters

history with its granite and forgiveness
while amid the orchard alcohols

the hornets spoke like terrorists
from the downed apples

 

Allan Peterson’s work has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Green Mountains Review, Indiana Review, The Journal, Sonora Review, ACM, and elsewhere. He received the 2002 Arts & Letters Poetry Prize, a Florida Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, and an NEA poetry fellowship. His poems “Poemissimo” and “Making Things Worse” appeared in AGNI 40, and “How Folklore Starts” appeared in AGNI 45.