Primed


It was middle June
during the duration
of a month that was a wait

for each day to come,
during that summer
when I would turn teen,

when I was almost something—
way past twelve and counting.
It was the middle of day,

mid-day heat halfway 
between cool and hot,
a double-handed noonday

stroke: the clock's
count of twelve
reminding me of what 

I was not. Still a multiple
of two, three, four, six,
I was a mere factoring

of too many baby birthdays—
crazy to be divisible by
only myself and one.


                       —Paulann Petersen

Poetry, Volume CLXXIV, No. 3
A Bride of Narrow Escape, Cloudbank Books, 2005

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