Peter Douglas

POINT OF ENTRY

      Dedicated to the memory of the poet’s cousin,  
      Suzanne Kondratenko
      (March 3, 1974—September 11, 2001, World Trade Center)

Manhattan, like a fat gold paperweight,
you hold down the Atlantic seaboard, curling
with salt and ocean breath.  I have come late
back home, to fragments, flustered papers hurling
themselves about in corners -- I have left
the window propped.  And Crumbles, my calico --
doubtful, obese, and old -- has halted the theft
and crabbed one battered item.  Does she know,
as worn and bruised as it is, sweated on
beneath her paw, this scrap of passion still
means most to me?  Because it’s here, not gone
to shadowed puddles off the windowsill,
or moon coins, or out West.  There’s some must stay
behind, until there’s something new we cannot not say.

Date of Birth: 12/12/78 Location: Stanford, California & Washington, DC Email: peterdouglas@stanfordalumni.org Publications: The GW Review, The Hollins Critic, The Mind’s Eye, Paperplates, Rattapallax, The Red Booth Review, Stirring V3:E3, V3:E5, V3:E6, The Tucumcari Literary Review, The Wisdom Project, Writer’s Journal

Goodbyes of Chalk Your Organic Garden Point of Entry Downtown Litmus -- Ballad of a Thin Cigarette this is a poem Evening Beginning The End An Old Japanese Poet Of This World For Friends Missing in Action Suicide The Cameo old man with a fly

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