Forever Light


     palm desert, california


More alive
the body unlit.

Body made visible
after dawn.

Seconds of kissing
a man & I touching.

Body the gods decide
should riverspin.

Arms and legs
invisible in seconds.

When I wake, a gun
nesting in my place.

Proof a man sunk
is a man inanimate.

Yet surely somewhere
dark there I am.

Chest disintegrating
lips: a feast of blue.

No skin to feed
the earth so I face up.

Bones green from a long
bed of moss.

Memory a shorn path
through the forest.

Yet still regret is silver
and more silver.

Body beaming light
through the trees.




Peter LaBerge is the author of the chapbook Hook (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). His recent work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal , The Iowa Review , Sixth Finch , Colorado Review , Best New Poets 2014 , and Indiana Review , among others. 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. Find him online at www.peterlaberge.com.