Caleb Petersen
Ten Reasons to Write Poetry
One) last night Hunter diced onions and poblano peppers,
finely, then scraped them into a pot of beef. Two)
it smelled of smoked paprika and cumin and my eyes
welled up with the need for metaphor. Three) my eyes
became rivers—not for their current—for their memory.
Four) there were my ancestors who crossed the river
holding a flood in their eyes. Oh how it poured. Oh how
the land was carved into property. Five) how else to talk
about all that is present—the way time gathers itself at
the edge of a knife (in this case, the one Hunter’s obsessed
with, the UX-10 model, the one I tattooed on his leg). Five-B)
we cut time into finely chopped units, last night, had dinner
ready by 6:52, which was 22 minutes late or as on time
as ever, and by that point whatever sorrow (river) I had carried
with me to the kitchen had disappeared, because Six) he’d
asked how I was and Seven) he put his hand on my back
and Eight) something about spice and steam in the air
can release a laughter I hadn’t known that I’d held,
which calls for repetition—the river—sprang forth,
was called out, from inside the body. That is, Nine) healing
comes even for the bodies who have refused to be bodies.
For even the bodies who cut up the rivers and clenched water
with jaws or fists or dams and there is the way my grandma
taught us that everything could be made right in the kitchen:
all of last week’s dinners thrown into the same casserole dish,
which brings me back to the narrative of this poem, the dish
(it can hold everything) in which we rolled the meat in tortillas
and covered them with cheese and canned sauce, Hunter asking,
you think this is enough? as I felt history spill out the side, as if
this could ever be enough, this one dinner, What, for Ten) people?
Caleb Petersen is a poet from Lincoln, Nebraska, where he is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska. His poetry has been published in the Summer 2023 issue of Deluge Journal and is forthcoming in their Winter 2024 issue. His poem “Washington St.” was published as an honorable mention in the Nebraska Poetry Society 2023 Open Poetry Contest.