“Retro Causation” by Peggy Dobreer
If you are alienated in your own house
how can your wings ever unfurl? –Maxine Hong Kingston
She’s got some nerve. Some call her the maker
of the Procrustean bed, hospital corners.
Don’t be too smart, too strong, too epiphanied.
Temporary infertility is to be expected in art.
She had the bad itch. Was restless as water but
looked cool as can be to the outside.
Inside, sharp as a shark’s tooth and arrogant as glory
on Sunday morning in the front pews.
How can the moth of your flurried past shield
the shape of your history from your future?
An act of love today can save a single life on a long
lost battlefield in a country as yet unnamed.
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Peggy Dobreer Artist Statement:
Peggy Dobreer is a Los Angeles native, poet, dancer,
teacher, founder of E=Mc2Bodied Poetry Workshops,
and curator of THE RwIrGiHtTe READ at Stories Books.
She is widely published, has one collection titled,
In The Lake of Your Bones, Moon Tide Press, and was
nominated for a Pushcart in 2012. Peggy is most
honored to have performed with Brendan Constantine
at The Church of Beethoven and The Outpost in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, to have been selected as a
Program Contributor for AROHO at Ghost Ranch in 2015,
and to have been one of ten poets selected for the
first Aeolian Harp Folio Series from Glass Lyre
Press, 2016. She’s a kick. You should see.
