Peter Douglas

ONE OF OUR HAUNTS

For Eliza

You taught me how to smoke one night in April,
kicking suburbia on the back of that
flustered Alaskan Crab, Dupont Circle,
near all those musical, tabooed bat-
like characters around the fountain -- water
splashing on concrete rims and crackle shrill
crash cymballine and laughing words that flutter
about and hone on our conversing, jostle
my close-trimmed hair. You tasted sex in Camels.
I tasted freedom from my parents, though
I’d cover up my blazer from the smells
tobacco leaves and chew gum in the Volvo,
windows wide blowing off the traces. Traces
of fear that go with me, lacing all our places.

Date of Birth: 12/12/78 Location: Stanford, California & Washington, DC Email: peterdls@stanford.edu Publications: The GW Review, The Hollins Critic, The Mind’s Eye, Paperplates, Rattapallax, The Red Booth Review, Stirring V3:E3, The Tucumcari Literary Review, The Wisdom Project, Writer’s Journal

- Poetry - Roaches Running From the Light White As Camphor Coveting the Ends of Bread One of Our Haunts Leaded Holding Patterns And Still, This Time Being Dead and All choice Risikesh - Prose - Paused

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