Peter Pereira is the author of several poetry collections, including the Hayden Carruth Award–winning Saying the World and What’s Written on the Body. He has been published in literary journals and anthologies and has appeared on National Public Radio’s The Writer’s Almanac. Pereira is a family physician living in Seattle.

Photograph by Tom Collicott.

Body Talk

by Peter Pereira

While the ear may hear what
the head heard, lips can slip or lisp.

Wrists will twist or twirl while
the hand writes the wriest writs—
lamps-lit palms opening to psalms.

But when the spine is supine
and the penis ripens, the mind
neither snipes nor opines.

People on couch
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