Mid-Season Décor

by Allison Leigh Peters

Walk through living
rooms with purpose,
with green. Walk through
the big screen. The banister,
the furniture, walk through
the urn. The toy
collectibles,
the digital picture
frames, walk through water
bottles on the coffee
table. Walk through junk
mail, through fake
plants, through pillows.
Through deadbolt locks.
Walk through stale talk.
Security camera fields
of vision, walk through
light, through shadows
made by light, through night
and day and curtains and
the bay window and fireplace,
walk through the fire.

Allison Leigh Peters won an Academy of American Poets Prize in 2010. Her most recent work has been published in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Burner Magazine, Connotation Press, Third Wednesday, Oberon Poetry Review and Avatar Review, among others. She lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.