Kate Peterson



CAUTERY

The blood is thick as milk.
I imagine you drowning
as it pours from your head, filling your nostrils
so there is no space at all for air. The smell—
I am not tough enough, still a child
in wet earth, pulling pennies from mud
in the old rotting barn,
talking to my model horses out in the rain.
Oh, let the water-filled tire tracks become rivers,
let the run-off
be a waterfall, piles of rust colored dirt,
mountains.
Let it not be so real
that you could die in my kitchen tonight
if this doesn't end.











Kate Peterson earned an MFA from Eastern Washington University in Spokane, WA where she currently works as an adjunct professor. Her poems have been published and are forthcoming inThe Sierra Nevada Review, Glassworks, Barnstorm, Baldhip, Aethlon,andThe Examined Life,among others. Links to her work can be found on her sad excuse for a website, katelaurenpeterson.tumblr.com







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