The Paddock Review

The Way

 

The way, 

if you’ve bitten 

your lip, your tongue, 

you keep biting it.

The way the scarlet

of every scab winks, 

voluptuous red button.

The way the world

mines enough salt, 

squeezes just enough 

juice from a lemon

for the small cuts.

The way paper

holds this poem, 

is sometimes

the knife.

…

This poem is from the book Male Pattern by Gus Peterson (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/male-pattern-by-gus-peterson/

While on its surface Male Pattern seems intended for a specific audience, it is undoubtedly a collection of poems for any person who has navigated the darker moments of existence in this modern landscape of contradiction and complexity, who has sought to find a foothold to begin the slow ascent back into moments of levity, even light. In accessible ruminations that begin with commutes, with observations of birds and chores, the at first mundane landscape of office work and healthcare stipples through the lens of a dawning mental health awareness and its meaning to one man’s perspective. These poems will, more often than not, take a strange route to both buoy and anchor but, most importantly, seek to give air to any set of lungs desperate to breathe by extracting the smallest particle of beauty from what weighs us all down.