Typo Magazine — Issue Two

Out of the whole azalea, one branch quivers
and there is the lizard.
Blue jays scream rat snake for everyone
because tree bark moved.
I am watching for sand wasps hunting for females
when a leaf on its elbow
lies down, and a snake in the form
of a little river pours itself out from the litter.
It does not see me. Just as well. We are to be avoided.
We are listed in their books with the vicious.
They are merely poisonous to live.
Before the shot, anticipation, after it, the wasteful inequity.
Hunters are those for whom this is guiltless.
One slat irregular in the laddered blind, and there
is the blazing eye of the neighbor.

Allan Peterson's Anonymous Or is now available from Spring Church Book Company. His poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Green Mountains Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Three Candles, Stickman Review, and Blaze. His awards include a 2002 Arts & Letters Poetry Prize, a Florida Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, as well as a NEA Fellowship in Poetry.

Typo — Issue Two