Peter Speikers works in health informatics for a national healthcare organization in the United States, where he assists physicians in the adoption and practical use of clinical technologies. His role focuses on bridging the gap between healthcare delivery and digital innovation, helping medical professionals integrate new systems and tools into their everyday clinical workflows. He holds a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he developed his skills in poetry and literary composition. His academic background in creative writing continues to inform his personal work and artistic development. Alongside his professional career in healthcare technology, he is actively working on a new manuscript of poetry, reflecting his ongoing commitment to literary practice. He currently resides in Des Moines, Iowa, where he balances his work in health informatics with his creative writing pursuits and broader artistic interests.
Our Breathing When It’s Dead Silent
They have a compass inside them,
Forever pointing to magnetic north,
A ghost ship with full sails crossing horizons.
They know what will come, and when.
They begin every hour of every day, every month
And every year, knowing it’s their last.
Tormented by confinement, they sing
A requiem for their incinerated bodies, amazed
How they die this way, continually unfinished.
Never threatened by a hundred different things,
They search for us in the dungeons of their memory.
They feel the enormous weight of our blessings.
They sense they’re still here, turned into lockets
And fastened to necklaces. They can’t free us
From the sins that drive us to destruction.
Their thoughts of living are attempts to revive
The greatest secret, the promise of a life beyond
Ancient wounds, divine curses, and last confessions.
They hoped to grow so old they wouldn’t notice
The terrible peacefulness that comes over them,
Our breathing when it’s dead silent.
The Way We Speak of Love
When by gift or theft, we pull
Sideways just one from the root,
The golden splendor for which
We are always in blind pursuit,
Escapes, stiffly pretty, simply
Precious in the cut glass vase.
Like this kept commencement,
On salvage the world depends,
The deep rooted, lower layers,
Smoldering yeast, molds and smuts,
Underground empires recomposing
Perfection’s prized promises.
And for those who return,
Thrust up from dank hollows,
Rank and lusty, still aglow
In the ashes of ruin, there grows
No bitterness of waste, only
The fiery beauty the blaze ignites.
We would that we be worthy
To conjure the earth’s memory
Back to life, implant in ourselves
The flare that pushes upward
Blossoms from under blossoms,
These in whose gift love lies,
Whether stolen or given or received.
Up here, there’s something
Worth guarding, revealed
Openly in the stellar spirals,
Tender pistils, teasing stamens,
The showy sepals and petals.
Together we walk among them,
Forgetting in this moment
Our infinite desire for possessions,
As if sparing even one, alive
And uncorrupted, restores in us
Our best intentions, those things
That make and keep us human.
The Broken Spotless Thing
I loved nothing better than to read
My book of saints, the candlelit faces,
Ordinary and humble, a world
That valued reflection, the spiritual
Meaning of restraint. Saint Sebastian
Captivated me, his burnished body
Bound to a tree and riddled with arrows,
Contorted in pain, but not corrupted,
Single-minded in his defiance. I too
Wished for a mystical union, to become
The broken spotless thing, and granted
Divine Revelation, yielding to a psychic
Undoing, where pain was meaningless,
And sacrifice worth worshipping. Now,
Having lost my devotion, I’m the sojourner,
Surveying our failings, the small events
We barely noticed, the opportunities
Missed, kindness we never extended,
The indifference of wasted omissions.
It’s only when we attend loved ones,
The sick and the dying, do we heal
Our own infirmities, not by force,
But with gentleness and affection,
And in caring for others, become
Our best selves. There’s meaning
In a life full of suffering, Sebastian,
After all, survived the arrows.
Solace
It’s not the truth we want,
But technicians, mighty gods
To change tragedy into mere
Suggestion, an ending without
Funeral faces and low voices.
Even so, our bodies betray us,
We can’t fend off the losses
With chemistry and computation.
When a loved one or a child
Stops breathing, we sign the cross
Three times, break down in tears,
Crushed with grief. There’s only
Compassion and remembrance,
A passing acquaintance, a single
Sympathy, a quiet summons.
When we’re overwhelmed,
When we’re no longer posing,
Even at the height of our pain,
There’s profit in finding peace
And waiting. What we wait for
Says everything about us.
We Lose More Than We Keep
For Doug Becken
It’s for me, now, the resolution
Of your unspent life,
And the revelation of this picture
Where you carry on in your
Service uniform, appeasing
Not so much the gods
As placating my demons.
You startle me, so closely
Do you resemble my own
Bashful grin turned old.
I fasten my eyes upon you,
My means of veneration,
And recount with reverence
How we’re weaker than our fathers.
Yours is not the world I live in,
Neither confessor nor martyr,
You’re never saved. By turns
Ignored and forgotten, the past
Holds you captive, confined
To the camera’s gaze, the tragic
Souvenir, forever absent.
The end comes when it chooses,
When promises come to nothing
And precautions prove useless.
There’s no sacrifice beyond
This human life, no enterprise
In suffering, if a hero is all it makes.
Because my greatest fear
Is not to feel loss, to be past caring,
I create a fiction, an afterlife
To make you present, and let loose
My longing, the guilt I suffer
In final acceptance, piecing together
The endings I invented.
And so, you begin again
With each retelling, your life
Deemed holy through selfless
Devotion, transformed and made
New in resplendent glory,
The life you hoped to live
Had there been different choices.
The Galway Review 