NAME, M/DD NAME, M/DD NAME, M/DD NAME, M/DD Express %26 Inspire Development %26 Publication

PETER KLINE


Mirrorform: Blue Yonder

for Sydney


I can still feel your blue,

hard like the truth is hard.

It bruises me. No word

I know could soften you.


No word can bring you to.

On the flatlands of your death

your ripcord smile is myth.

I can still feel your blue.



Mirrorform Psalm


If I'm to hunt for you

ahead of my own flesh,

twist my wrist with the leash

while hot meat saunters through


till your horn commands Pursue,

if ever it does, I'd best

get good at being chased.

—If I'm to hunt for you.



Mirrorform: Double Cliché


Scrubbed-up with the same soap.

Spit-shined by the same rag.

Buds from the same dime bag.

As twin as tan and taupe.


Double-duped by the rope-a-dope.

Hooked like an Eng-Chang eel.

Two shucked clams at the Raw Deal.

Scrubbed-up with the same soap.



Mirrorform: Pajamalaise


The destination brunch.

The lovingkindness class.

The CRISPRed babyface.

The Sunday Funday paunch.


The housetrained Darwin's finch.

The burr mill loneliness.

The polyamorous kiss.

The desolation brunch.



Mirrorform: Rubber Stamp


Take action / Take no action

Compel / Condone / Combat

"No comment." / "Could you repeat that?" /

(Accelerate redaction)


Fiction / XXXXXXX

Ground-invade / Concede

Cut him / Let him bleed

Take action / Take no action



Peter Kline is the author of two poetry collections, Deviants and Mirrorforms, forthcoming from Parlor Press/Free Verse Editions in November 2019. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, he has also received residency fellowships from the Amy Clampitt House, James Merrill House, Marble House Project, Artsmith Orcas Island, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation. His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and many other journals, as well as the Best New Poets series, the Verse Daily website, and the Random House anthology of metrical poetry, Measure for Measure. Since 2012, he has directed the San Francisco literary reading series Bazaar Writers Salon. He teaches writing at the University of San Francisco and Stanford.


— posted November 2019

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