—–—Kentucky, 2018

I dream myself the boy thrown
from the Jeep again: face, burlap

to hide what the boys made
with their fists. Door opened,

door shut, chorus of snow like laughter
in the throats of altar boys, unlit.

Dude, what are we gonna fuckin’ do
with him—the body unwilling

to melt through the Gamaliel night. Again
like a prayer in the bucket

of my own stone well, I am
unspoken, unspeaking, waiting

to be lowered from light, the night
made scattershot by the brights

of the minivan one borrowed
from his mother—

———————–—I’m just a boy
waiting to be the next boy

plastered on the ten o’clock news,
waiting for small armies of god-

fearing men to furrow endless fields
in search, waiting for wives

to newspaper garage floors with my face.

 

 

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Peter LaBerge is the founder and editor in chief of the Adroit Journal and an MFA candidate and Writers in the Public Schools Fellow at NYU. His poetry appears in AGNI, Best New Poets, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Pleiades, and Tin House.