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Maureen Thorson

@maureenthorson.bsky.social

850 followers 360 following 800 posts

Poet person. Link for 8/26 Veliz Reading: https://tr.ee/Wmnki3lOt4

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 11h

“Every angel is terrifying.” A poem by Michael Palmer.

After Midnight

Sometime after midnight
Han Shan drifted down
a mountain path
and arrived in my dream
only to announce
that every angel is terrifying,
also that heron you saw
by the muddy pond
was not real.

You, reader,
may believe this or not.
Han Shan said
that he does not
though he spoke
such words
to me
as if
they were his own.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 1d

“You were wasted on this world.” A poem by Natalie Shapero.

How'd You Get This Number

I couldn't stomach a movie about it, after
it happened to me—that's why I make lists
of plausible additional upcoming shocks,
then scramble to watch all films on these subjects
while I still find them fun. You remember the one
with the woman walking forever in winter?
Everyone loves that actor, but they found the plotting
shoddy and too spare. They said she was
wasted on that role. Like you were wasted

on this world—I'm the real one who belongs here,
who suits its din and disuse.
After you’d gone, I prayed for myself
to outdo my prior low era, so that I could feel
solace at the thought of how you never
lived to see it. I tithed, I ignited
a votive. I did not have to wait long.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 2d

“Trawling your dark as owls do.” A poem by Sylvia Plath.

You're

BY SYLVIA PLATH

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 3d

“Barometric pressure is the leading cause of tears.” A poem by Nancy Lee.

Of Factual Interest

BY NANCY LEE

Parisians prescribe ice baths for uncertainty.
Barometric pressure is the leading cause
of tears. Each time a doctor rubs her nose,
a bundle of bad news is born. Amniotic fluid
rises with the stock market. The butcher
uses a sharper knife for sinew than for bone.
Snails without their shells die of dread
before exposure. Miscarriage on Friday
means you still host Sunday brunch.
Fish can live on land if they'd just put
their minds to it. To morcellate your uterus
the surgeon will use a hand blender.
A seed germinates in a songbird's mouth
only if the bird stops singing.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 4d

“I fight the constant conscious conscious.” A poem by Eileen Myles.

OOH

Baby's
apricot
with
its
tongue
hanging
out

I fight
the constant

conscious
conscious

I fight
for
you.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 5d

“Possibilities in sleeves of limitation.” A poem by Juliet Patterson.

EXTINCTION EVENT

To burst in your mind with costly grace.

To mass in your faceted syllables.

The arrested movement of time; hours
in clusters, overripe.

Hours, like broken offshoots,
flourishing as they can;

possibilities in sleeves of limitation.
Whorled taut, 'each brittle

node to a flushed
bud', last needles

embossed in clay.
That we break

from your tongue
and now tease ash,

stain of a titian
butterfly.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 6d

“Again she shows me the world.” A poem by Ben Doyle.

Radio, Radio

In the middle of every field,
obscured from the side by grass
or cornhusks, is a clearing where
she works burying swans alive
into the black earth. She only
buries their bodies, their wings.
She packs the dirt tight around
their noodle necks & they shake
like long eyelashes in a hurricane.
She makes me feed them by hand
twice a day for one full year: grain,
bits of chopped fish. Then she
takes me to the tin toolshed.
Again she shows me the world
inside her silver transistor radio.
She hands me the scythe.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 7d

“Your bones are cushioned by goslings and cygnets.” A poem by Caroline Knox

October Poem

October poem: the sun eclipsed
with your Canada geese again,
their voice a folk not a court instrument.

Swans are their white mirror on the lake or sky.
but even if these geese were walking fish
coambulating on the brittle planet
among the aforesaid, with their ecological honks,
nobody could catch them. They would uphold

the artificial order as ghosted characters
against the clouds like a herringbone jacket.
Days your eyes folow the oblique, slubbed sky.
Nights your bones are cushioned by goslings and cygnets,

transition markers in an ambiguous world,
like the lion abroad, who seems to be drinking
the swans and geese, but they keep right on flying
as the surface smooths again. This amounts
to the Augustan formation now in overlay,
as "entertaining, beautiful, and finally important":
Lyon, Fish & Swann—a firm of advocates for poets.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 8d

“Lambswool on the lamb, the glamour of flesh” A poem by Andrea Cohen.

ELEGY FOR ME

I was what
I Ioved: lambswool
on the lamb, the glamour
of flesh, memory of
what it is to speak
as evening enters
a room in winter,
snow falling as
in a silent film
called Us, and
if a reel breaks,
the genius projectionist
perched above
the darkened theatre
fixes it and begins
again at the beginning.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 9d

“Like the hands of a florist wrapping
bouquets.” A poem by Tomaz Salamun, translated by Brian Henry.

Three Flies

BY TOMAŻ ŠALAMUN
TRANSLATED BY BRIAN HENRY

Three flies, woken by the sun
on a white, illuminated wall,
leap like the hands of a florist wrapping
bouquets. They remind me of a knife
thrower, who performs with five in the air.
Is the quantity restricted?
Catch and don't think. Weigh me.
I’ll run away from you like water and press you
like ice if you sizzle too much.
Look at them on the white wall.
Three trees from the new shoots
of a cedar. From the corner of a cube.
And, if you look closely, from
a gully.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 10d

“Clocks fully struck in fields of fading flowers” A poem by Heidy Steidlmayer.

Thistles

BY HEIDY STEIDLMAYER

stand as clocks fully struck
in fields of fading flowers—
when the fires of summer come
they will gather up the hours
of rains past, frost endured

and famished stalks in full gale
that begin their telling once
all forms of telling fail

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 11d

“The owl takes the cello down its throat” A poem by Angie Macri.

Soundbox

BY ANGIE MACRI

The owl takes the cello down its throat
so the strings and wood are left,
song digested in its cells. The energy released
fuels its eyes, its perfect horns
like the slice of moon, bow drawn by arms
no one can see. The arrow
is also concealed, but the angle
of the bow shows the weapon points
at the earth, the goddess in her aim.
Body, neck, where fingers used to be, the owl
asks the same questions for centuries
or rather people hear it that way,
what is in their own mind, who will
come for me, who sees, who knows.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 12d

“We hardly ever see the moon any more” A poem by Frank O’Hara.

AVENUE A

We hardly ever see the moon any more
so no wonder
it's so beautiful when we look up suddenly
and there it is gliding broken-faced over the bridges
brilliantly coursing, soft, and a cool wind fans
your hair over your forehead and your memories
of Red Grooms' locomotive landscape
I want some bourbon/you want some oranges/I love the leather
jacket Norman gave me
and the corduroy coat David
gave you. it is more mysterious than Spring, the El Greco
heavens breaking open and then reassembling like lions
in a vast tragic veldt
that is far from our small selves and our temporally united
passions in the cathedral of Januaries

everything is too comprehensible
these are my delicate and caressing poems
I suppose there will be more of those others to come, as in the past so many!
but for now the moon is revealing itself like a pearl
to my equally naked heart

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 13d

“Skin unzippered like a winter jacket.” A poem by Jim Warner.

Paul's scalpel

My cousin spent his senior year
dissecting a cross-section of life,

well, a cross-section of the dead.
that summer, that summer that was
meant to be the last big carefree#
bender, we sat behind the garage
and after the third bottle of Manishewitz:

“everything I see
I see in pieces—skin unzippered
like a winter jacket on a sunny
day, everything peels away. I
am no longer whole—just parts
on parts and I want to sew it
all back up but no one told me how.”

Six years later, unsteady
doctor's hands wave off the story
like it never happened.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 14d

“Always the center of my own attraction.” A poem by Bill Berkson.

“The Universe Reinvents Itself Ceaselessly”

1) Occupational panic in the pygmy forest!

2) Clamp or weight or camper clutch.

3) A timekeeper's tiny pencil.

4) The parts you hide so's it won't get lost.

5) Song: “I wish I had a rubber band” etc.

6) No one's really retired—they're all still up.

7) Still hanging around for someone to say “Keep up the good work.”

8) Misty water : The moon's in neon, almost blue.

9) The Stork Club is closed.

10) Motivation : Harder than light.

11) In another dimension, there is no applause.

12) There are no “moves.”

13) Sources are scrambled, likewise the audience.

14) Warmer-uppers for other endeavors.

15) A sense of ceremony : All you got.

16) Never mind the picture—is the frame crooked?

17) Paint's a joy to talk of. “Different schools,” says Paul.

18) The company sends out postcards that ask if what you ordered is what you really want.

19) Always the center of my own attraction.

20) “Scholars are silent on the subject of light.”

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 15d

“This is the hardest part of the marriage: knowing.” A poem by Dorianne Laux.

Sunday Radio

From my husband's window I hear a woman
singing, low in her throat, a song meant to break

a thousand hearts into bloom.
In his loneliness he sings too,

losing words and notes along the way
but staying with her, sure of the refrain.

This is the hardest part of the marriage: knowing.
Clipping the roses, knowing. Raking the leaves.

Pausing at the staircase to listen
to how his voice breaks, then goes on with the song.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 16d

“My heart a lonely star with no matching star” A poem by Dorothea Lasky.

WHAT YOU THINK WHEN YOU ARE CONFUSED

I knew that somehow in the midst of this confusion
Was the true dawning of myself.
My soul was a man and like a man
I would wander forever among the stars and flowers, lonely.
My heart a lonely star with no matching star
Anywhere in the universe and even so
Looking like a man for somnewhere
To rest my freedom and resent it.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 17d

“Consider how even this mug will eventually disintegrate” A poem by Amy Lawless.

ROBERT FROST

Unable to eat all of his own children,
Robert Frost
would tuck us in again after we'd gone to bed.
He'd say
“Here is warm milk.
Consider how even this mug will eventually disintegrate
like my mother who used to bathe her
fake teeth in it before she died.”
He even took my ability to mourn for
my grandmother.

Once I saw himn with a balled-up hanky in his mouth
sucking his own spit as he wrote, moaning into the cloth.
I grabbed a log
to put it over the dying embers in the fireplace.
He grabbed it out
of my hands and said it wasn't cold enough.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 18d

“I mean, I can really move in a dazzling fashion.” A poem by Todd Colby.

Hallelujah Anyway

I'm going to build a vast and spongy room,
and invite you in. If you're too busy or distracted
to come in, then l just undulate around you politely.
When I pour water on my room, it hisses.
The fog of my breath will become a narcotic,
and you'll put your face in it. How will you feel?
Tl bring you out to the garden, and show you
the stones I moved around. I’ll take you to my forest
with orange dust storms. You like that, don't you?
I'll dance around your life better
than anyone you've ever seen do that sort of thing.
I mean, I can really move in a dazzling fashion.
I'm warning you in this poem: I want you to be prepared
and surprised. I want to blow on your candles
and watch them flutter. I'm made of gingham and welts,
and you are on my wish list.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 19d

“call me hurricane i answer to anything” A poem by Lauren Hunter.

i am warm and powerful

this happens when i am between asleep
and you when my hair is wet
call me hurricane i answer to anything

these warm waters feed
my frenzy be kind to me it has
no bearing on your survival
put me in the car i need
constant motion. i am a still
still thing. i need to be pressed

back inside my borders
everynight i come
with only these instructions
expect southern weather

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 20d

“I wouldn't be friends with a new girl either.” A poem by Sarah Crossan.

Karma

BY SARAH CROSSAN

IfI were back in Gdańsk, I wouldn't be friends
With a new girl either.
If I still had Magdalena
To copy homework from
And sit with at lunch,
I'd ignore a new girl too,
Like we snubbed Alexsandra who stood
Far enough away
To be discreet.
Close enough to be invited.

We just ignored her.

We played tennis, pretended not to notice
She was holding a racket and
Wearing shorts with pockets.
Why did we do that?

But we weren't mean to her.
We didn't whisper and laugh,
Avoid touching her in case we caught something.

We simply ignored her.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 21d

“if only there was a second moon.” A poem by Gerald Stern.

Journey

BY GERALD STERN

How dumb he was to wipe the blood from his eye
where he was sucker-punched and stagger out
onto the Plaza blind. He had been waiting
all night for the acorn moon and eating pineapple
topping over his ice cream and arguing
either physics or philosophy. He thinks,
at this late date, it was the cave again
throwing a shadow, although it may have been
only some way of reconciling the two
oblivious worlds, which was his mission anyhow—
if only there was a second moon. He had a
kind of beard and though he could practically lift
the front end of a car and was already
reading Blake, he had never yet tasted honey.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 22d

“I am trying not to let making too much of things become a habit” A poem by Matthea Harvey.

ADDRESS TO AN ABSENT FLEA

Reading the sonnet the old way
was impossible once the period

started leaping about. Through
the magnifying glass you seemed

a gadget God, with a suitably
parasitical air. I am trying not

to let making too much of things
become a habit—I read too slowly

already. Little Itch-Ticket whose
menu has only one item on it,

I think it's important to be specific.
I've never felt desire before.

I won't believe that was accidental
syntax. If a pen were a turret to me

I too might wait, nest in a tapestry
& save my stories for some bloodless day,

but please come back from wherever
you've gone. There is so little left.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 23d

“You three go to the Cemetery Bar to have a quick one.” A poem by Kenneth Koch.

To Life, Breath, and Experience

Can any of you exist without the others,
Or does one of you mean alI?
No experience without life and breath.
But are there breath and life without experience?
Does a just-born ant have experience?
Experience, here is the ant
You see if you can see
How much of you it has.
Breath, you are listening close.
Life, you lean back in your chair.
Soon it will be noon
And suddenly you three go
To the Cemetery Bar
To have a quick one,
And then, when you come out
Of the dark inn bar into the glaring sunlight,
Who was just standing there
You don't notice that someone is gone
aking a witty remark or looking along
The map edge to find out some location.

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 24d

“Reverse that curse faster than you dealt it” A poem by Ashley McWaters

BURDEN STITCH

O permit thy gracious hand to gesture
Back on itself
reverse that curse faster

Than you dealt it Did you dream me vaster
In knowledge skill
Teacher I was last or

Nearly so of all How could I master
All you taught
surpass enough to fluster

You I'll write
my name in web
Disaster