Tobias Peterson
Tobias Peterson holds an MFA in Poetry from Texas State University. "Tattered Spandex" was written as part of an ongoing collaboration with the painter Grant Hottle, with whom he teaches at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. Tobias lives across the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in AMP, Ghost City Press, The Gulf Coast Review, Coldnoon, and elsewhere.
Tattered Spandex
How pink we all were then, how
teal. Aglow beneath the nuclear threat,
how we crossed drugstore parking lots
of the predigital eighties and risked
a glimpse into the envelope, thumbing
the prints for our own glossy ghosts.
Then how quickly our eyes made for
the poplars, which did not disappoint
in the way of photographs. They filled
the frames of courthouse windows and bent
when we swore to name a man if we saw one.
Those nights we gelled in basement clubs,
filaments sparking, lying flat between
our frictions. You dubbed me elbow and hip
bone. We knew the worn and form-fitting
sheen of every boundary. Instead of light,
a synthesized drumming. Instead of faces,
a chorus in the language of wind-upon-limb.