DC Poets: Richard Peabody

Water

Knows your name.

Remembers your shape.

Amniotic fluid. Pee. 

The ice in your drink.


Returning comet.

Water dancer
 Water sprite.

The Nile. Corfu.
YMCA pool.


Water, which held you up,

slips past your lips
into your gut.

Rain droplets,

snow.

Creek water
inside you.

River water
 inside your lover.


Recognizing itself,


questioning
the other.

Inside both.

Water breaking,
remembering,

Trilobites,

kelp,

tides.


 Richard Peabody is the founder and co-editor Gargoyle Magazine and editor (or co-editor) of 24 anthologies including Mondo Barbie, Conversations with Gore Vidal, A Different Beat: Writings by Women of the Beat Generation. The author of a novella, three short story collections, and seven poetry books, he is also a native Washingtonian. Peabody taught fiction writing at Johns Hopkins University for 15 years. His new book is The Richard Peabody Reader (Alan Squire Publishers, 2015).