Peter Mason
—
Prayer
“I have built myself/a safer body, covered the rot with rot. Sometimes I can hear that little/boy//I tucked away”
— Teacher’s Pet, Hieu Minh Nguyen
For Arkansas
What might grow from this
half-mound of piled rot, orchard of almost
dead blooming mouth of mine
that failed pills, monoxide, god,
the prayer a wound dug
so often I feel small
and with too little spine how soft
my own voice pulls to earth
to ask what good is this single life
I have come to cherish in moments
this skin loves itself for every failure
of an end I am truly grateful now
I am so far from the edge of this country
there is no water I cannot see across
the winter here is nothing deep enough
to lull the dark which is to say, everything,
I hope, is becoming okay some days
all I have left is what? I have survived
and some days that is enough
Peter Mason is a Bi+ poet from Rochester, NY currently living in the Twin Cities area. He is a finalist for the 2022 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, a recipient of the inaugural C.D. Wright/Academy of American Poets Prize, and an Artists 360 Grant from the Mid America Arts Alliance. He earned his MFA at the University of Arkansas, where he served as the Development Director and Assistant Poetry Editor of The Arkansas International, and Development Director for the Open Mouth Literary Center. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, AGNI, Ninth Letter, Booth,Vinyl Poetry & Prose, The Journal, and elsewhere.
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