Tav: ת
From Draw Me After (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2022) by Peter Cole. Used with the permission of the publisher.
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This Pig I
This pig I live with really
does hover over much of
what I do and say it’s in
the room I lie in daily when
I try to tell myself the truth
about deceit or what I read
or just my being a jerk and lazy
pissy it brings to mind the swine
within and out of sight it’s like
a shadow in its knowing how
dark at heart I am in part
it loves the muck I’m often in
the sty and stink of me and my
it’s like a household deity now
whose name is mine to give and take
2022
Edensong
Wanting song
in the beginning
beginning to end
now we are falling
through what’s to come
needing Eden
now we are drifting
Eden undone
2022
The Ghazal of What Hurt
Pain froze you, for years—and fear—leaving scars. But now, as though miraculously, it seems, here you are walking easily across the ground, and into town as though you were floating on air, which in part you are, or riding a wave of what feels like the world's good will— though helped along by something foreign and older than you are and yet much younger too, inside you, and so palpable an X-ray, you're sure, would show it, within the body you are, not all that far beneath the skin, and even in some bones.
2008