Maureen Thorson

92* I live in a village in the countryside, without a father or a mother. With no name, no rank in my clan. Some people will call me any old name. Some people call me another. No one is my teacher: I'm just a poor low creature like many another. But I know myself. I'm real, and my heart is the Diamond.

“Some people will call me any old name.” A poem by Han Shan, translated by J.P. Seaton.

WINTER SWAN It is a hollow garden, under the cloud; Beneath the heel a hollow earth is turned; Within the mind the live blood shouts aloud; Under the breast the willing blood is burned, Shut with the fire passed and the fire returned. But speak, you proud! Where lies the leaf-caught world once thought abiding, Now but a dry disarray and artifice? Here, to the ripple cut by the cold, drifts this Bird, the long throat bent back, and the eyes in hiding.

“Within the mind the live blood shouts aloud.” A poem by Louise Bogan.

Nocturne After a friend has gone I like the feel of it: The house at night. Everyone asleep. The way it draws in like atmosphere or evening. One-o-clock. A floral teapot and a raisin scone. A tray waits to be taken down. The landing light is off. The clock strikes. The cat comes into his own, mysterious on the stairs, a black ambivalence around the legs of button-back chairs, an insinuation to be set beside the red spoon and the salt-glazed cup. the saucer with the thick spill of tea which scalds off easily under the tap. Time is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider on the dining-room window has fallen asleep among complexities as I will once the doors are bolted and the keys tested and the switch tumed up of the kitchen light which made outside in the back garden an electric room—a domestication of closed daisies, an architecture instant and improbable.

“Time is a tick, a purr, a drop.” A poem by Eavan Boland.

THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY OF REMADE DESIRE In the invisible country of remade desire there is no anthem or flag only a letter in a worn envelope passed between citizens; this gesture is at once a declaration of statehood and the cross- ing of its borders. In this state there is no eye cream with or without 24K gold. The letter is written on onionskin in faded ink, typed on mimeograph paper, minutely sealed in a miniature envelope, scratched onto a leaf. It says “I long to be with you in any open space.”

“There is no anthem or flag only a letter.” A poem by Kristen Case.

dear white xmas, cross my heart. heat. hurt. an insulting injury. the wound is hard to place, oh. ou? x marks the spot. spooky. tis the sea- son to be haunted. attached to the past. in the grip of ships. ahoy! unmoored. a pale ailment. hail and well met. meant well. enough. frothy, snow-capped waves. an icy greeting. a cold snap. slap. slip. a lightmare, lightly whipped. screamy. hissy. fit to be tied. a tempered tantrum. just like the ones i used to throw.

“A lightmare, lightly whipped.” A poem by Evie Shockley.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SKILL There is only facility and retribution. The day I woke up giggling was the day I gave up controlling my perversion: That was one bad dream. Why is the heart broken and not squashed, flattened, or wrung out? Would you wring out an icicle? I give up writing about twice a day, just to keep things fresh. I write myself a citation every time I break the rule and start writing again. Sometimes I write a citation just so I can write a citation.

“Why is the heart broken and not squashed . . .” A poem by Sarah Manguso.

Vertigo Mind led body to the edge of the precipice. They stared in desire at the naked abyss. If you love me, said mind, take that step into silence. If you love me, said body, turn and exist.

“Mind led body to the edge of the precipice.” A poem by Anne Stevenson.

FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH: A CONJUGATION I am standing in a doorway. My dress is blue. My hair swept up like hope. You stand beside me, young and thin. You hold our new son, a bright penny. She is there too, her head thrown back in laughter, her hands in her pockets. It is Christmas. We do not know this will be her last. You never know. You cannot know. They tell you everything but this.

“I am standing in a doorway. My dress is blue.” A poem by Jacqueline Allen Trimble.

Clarity After the event the rockslide realized, in a still diversity of completion, grain and fissure, declivity & force of upheaval, whether rain slippage, ice crawl, root explosion or stream erosive undercut: well I said it is a pity: one swath of sight will never be the same: nonetheless, this shambles has relieved a bind, a taut of twist, revealing streaks & scores of knowledge now obvious and quiet.

“One swath of sight will never be the same.” A poem by A.R. Ammons.

The Suitor We lie back to back. Curtains lift and fall, like the chest of someone sleeping. Wind moves the leaves of the box elder; they show their light undersides, turning all at once like a school of fish. Suddenly I understand that I am happy. For months this feeling has been coming closer, stopping for short visits, like a timid suitor.

“We lie back to back.” A poem by Jane Kenyon.

Very happy to have a poem from my mss in the new issue of @south85journal.bsky.social ❤️

BECCA KLAVER Big Enough Weeks pass. While you move your things out, I dont know where to go, so I walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and back, looking for some majesty to overshadow my litle tragedy, to make it feel small. A flock of birds dives down Cadman Plaza, and I imagine getting swept up and away. In the lobby of the new doctor's office the next day, sudden vertigo at a wall of windows overlooking New York Bay. This can't be real. She holds a torch for so many lines of flight: helicopters, barges, ferries, and wakes. My sister calls. “Living there seems so hard; maybe you should move away.” I don't know how to explain that it's the only place big enough. I could sling my keening down tunnels, up rivers, across bridges, between buildings, on and on and on, and never fill them up.

“She holds a torch for so many lines of flight.” A poem by Becca Klaver.

14 Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you're bored means you have no Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature, Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes as bad as achilles, who loves people and valiant art, which bores me. And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag and somehow a dog has taken itself & its tail considerably away into mountains or sea or sky, leaving behind: me, wag.

“Life, friends, is boring.” Oh hey, it’s your old terrible book boyfriend John Berryman with “Dream Song 14,” perhaps the modern poetic apotheosis of ‘I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.” And yet.

UNTITLED AMHERST SPECTER a sound of open ground having been taken now a silver wisp winking on the roof silver imp waving from a long shaft ago I am a leaf storm night I have seen the long file of mule trains and metal the cavalry these sounds we live within speaking to you now sir, I was a soldier in these woods

“The long file of mule trains and metal” A poem by Peter Gizzi.

APPETITE I eat these wild red raspberries still warm from the sun and smelling faintly of jewelweed in memory of my father tucking the napkin under his chin and bending over an ironstone bowl of the bright drupelets awash in cream my father with the sigh of a man who has seen all and been redeemed said time after time as he lifted his spoon men kill for this.

“The sigh of a man who has seen all and been redeemed.” A poem by Maxine Kumin.

VOLTA It was getting very late. I waited for a different ending. I held my breath. June, July. The following July. It didn't swerve. I expected it to swerve, that's the promise, the twist at the end, how it pulls against the way it drives, black ice in moonlight. Something happened and I turned toward you. Something happened and you turned away. You didn't turn back. Listen, this is important. I'm sorry I scared you but I didn't die. You don't get to stay mad about it. You were shitty and you doubled down and stayed down, investing in it. You renounced the world so it wouldn't leave first. It worked. If you can't set it down then fall on your knees and feel the weight of it. I was right about everything. If it's any consolation, I'll never forgive you. You're welcome. Let awe end. Just like that. Fair enough.

“You renounced the world so it wouldn’t leave first.” A poem by Richard Siken.

It's satisfying to eat exactly the right amount of, say, French toast and then stop, for you have just achieved a moral victory in the middle of the flow of time, and though it flows away, this victory, you have its aftertaste, along with butter and genuine Vermont maple syrup from a tree not far down the road.

“A moral victory in the middle of the flow of time.” From Ron Padgett’s long poem, Lockdown.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

OOH Baby's apricot with its tongue hanging out I fight the constant conscious conscious I fight for you.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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