Sitting on the chrome bench
in their room painted taupe green
and the doctor saying the word cancer
the black orange sun
fighting the old flicker fluorescents, I’m
this pile of silt now
magazines into the ill past
vast numbers of magazines into the far
everything you remember
the little house
all the people now dead
someone’s in the leaves
the doctor with his eyes
like pennies
still looking at you
speaking in his clipped language
backward.
About Peter Layton
Peter Layton's poetry has appeared in Frontier, The Sheltered Poet, The 13th Warrior Review, The Plastic Tower, Wild Violet and Perspectives, among many, many others. He resides in Lakewood, California.
