Dear Leona for the Manila Envelope Filled With Hair Clippings

that I want        to compare to mine
though I am sure             it remains
 
foreign             & like the rest of you
 
a lighthouse             i once dreamt
fit in my small                   pale hands Dear
 
Leona I want             to windstorm
the parts of you    that mean
 
the least to me             The curious swish
 
of your scare-             curved back
undressing             in the moonless
 
ambivalence             of a clinic The shh
 
of blond hair        meeting sanitized tiles
almost comforting             but broken
 
as a mother’s             promise to wake
 
 
 

Peter LaBerge is the author of the chapbooks Makeshift Cathedral (YesYes Books, 2017) and Hook (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). His recent work appears in Best New Poets, Colorado Review, Harvard Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades, Tin House, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the Bucknell University Stadler Center for Poetry and the founder and editor-in-chief of The Adroit Journal. He lives in Philadelphia, where he is an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania.