Lynne Thompson

Earth Omen, Earth Omen,
Will You Be Mine?


Scientists are full of news these days.
Trust that. Rue that.
 
There is no heaven or hell,
only earth and mystery.
 
None have done wrong
who still have a tongue.
 
In the Gospel of John the body
and glory converge
 
waking so many hours before full day
from the dream:
 
burglar music, late morning, no one home.
Yeah, there’s a basic rhythm in everything
 
like a thief on tiptoe stealing into airspace
on the notes showing its provenance.
 
You who I cannot save,
listen to me:
 
the magpie is the prince of dark arts,
the albatross is always an omen.

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Sources: Crystal Williams, “Double Helix” John Hodgen, “Hamlet Texts Guilderstern about Playing Upon the Pipe” David Feinstein, “Kaddish” Gregory Orr, “Three Dark Proverb Sonnets” Major Jackson, “The Flâneur Tends A Well-Liked Summer Cocktail” David Brendan Hopes, “Certain Things” Rodney Jones, “Homecoming” Yusef Komunyakaa, “The Last Bohemian of Avenue A” Amit Jahmudar, “Kill List” Judson Mitcham, “White” Matthew Olzmann, “Letter Beginning With Two Lines by Czeslaw Milosz” Wendy Viedlock, “Deconstruction”

Jane Hirshfield Speaks of Life, says


​
there are times I feel myself cow stripped of her leather:
…look at my unhandy hand.
 
A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question
whose far side I begin now to enter
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame;
 
a bestiary of incoherent parts;
…the evidence: irrefutable, the low buzzing.
 
Like an ant carrying her bits of leaf or sand,
you work with what you are given--

​

Sources: Jane Hirshfield’s book Given Sugar, Given Salt.




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Lynne Thompson was the winner of the Tuscon Literary Award (Poetry) in 2017, the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize in 2016 and a Master Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles for 2015-16. Thompson is the author of Start With a Small Guitar and Beg No Pardon, winner of the Perugia Book Award and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Ecotone, Salamander, The Fourth River, African American Review and, Poetry, among others.