<div class="line">A microwave is my savior; I shall not starve.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">It alloweth me to eat quickly. It leadeth me</div>
<div class="line">to purchase Stouffers in bulk.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">It restoreth dehydrated onions. It delivers me</div>
<div class="line">from pre-heating for pre-heating’s sake.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Yea, though I walk through the valley</div>
<div class="line">of canned goods, I shall fear no tin containers</div>
<div class="line">for plastics art with me and glass and ceramics,</div>
<div class="line">they comfort me.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">It preparest a roast turkey in thirty-six minutes;</div>
<div class="line">four for carrots when they’re ’waved on HIGH.</div>
<div class="line">My rumaki comes out crisp.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Surely, defrosting and warming shall follow me</div>
<div class="line">all the days of my life and I shall dwell</div>
<div class="line">in the land of a Hotpoint forever.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/ThompsonPsalm.mp3"></audio></figure>

I Reached Out and Am Awaiting a Response

How It Happened

Psalm for Working Women

<div class="line">knows she was an uncommon arroyo who understood</div>
<div class="line1">that blue on the quintile is a withering thing;</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">knows Billie lived in an upended Vermont and was</div>
<div class="line1">not unlike a nova or a seed in a scalawag’s belly;</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">figures that La Gardenia’s mistake was believing that</div>
<div class="line1">autumn in New York would make a satisfactory break</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">and that junk was the best horse she never saddled.</div>
<div class="line1">But I have learned to beware the tonsils of swivelhipped</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">conquerors whose lanolin cannot absorb</div>
<div class="line1">loneliness. I have gotten lost in the politics of</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">undressed mud and am no longer obliged to lie down</div>
<div class="line1">with fat cats. When I am too scared to dream,</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">I, my own bald-faced tympani, admonish my dismal pen</div>
<div class="line1">to publish the music that will alarm my arrogant judges.</div>


Kill Them in the Morning

Holding Light

A Lover, Rejected, Rejects the Myth That Is Billie Holiday

<div class="line3">an afterthought,</div>
<div class="line3">meat gone rancid,</div>
<div class="line3">Anna Karenina in blue hose,</div>
<div class="line3">ephemerata.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Every need I’ve declined to marry</div>
<div class="line">has failed me: moonrise and the milksops</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">I would have loved. Every daughter</div>
<div class="line">who could have been my revenge.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Surprises have never been much of a surprise</div>
<div class="line">and that has wrought thimbles of scandal.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Also, wheelbarrows and Puccini, the Eucharist</div>
<div class="line">and television have all failed or been botched.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">It’s <em>getting on</em> time and I can’t find one Schnauzer</div>
<div class="line">who will nuzzle his constant heart in my lap.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Someone in Kansas plays a Stradivarian dirge</div>
<div class="line">but even those wry notes are much too sweet.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">My pigment drips more than Pollock’s.</div>
<div class="line">My hard history has been sung.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line3">See the palimpsest of my body,</div>
<div class="line3">its full-length chiaroscuro</div>
<div class="line3">laying stranded, lovely</div>
<div class="line3">in its ruins?</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/ThompsonLament.mp3"></audio></figure>

Phone Sox

The Warm Bed

Lament: I Am Implication

<div class="line">In California, there were seasons for fires, once. When</div>
<div class="line">Motown released Martha &amp; her Vandellas’ <em>Heat Wave</em></div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">and I shimmied with the door knob because I was</div>
<div class="line">a believer that tomorrow was a vow lit from within,</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">the season usually began with a rudely-named Indian</div>
<div class="line">Summer and was over just about the time the family</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">sat down to gorge on turkey flash-dancing in filmy gravy,</div>
<div class="line">macaroni-and-cheese, and collard greens. There’s no such</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">season anymore and fires are no longer content to play</div>
<div class="line">by themselves. See how Oregon’s Bootleg Fire isn’t fire only.</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">Is lightning. Is generator of its own weather and the clouds</div>
<div class="line">pyrocumulonimbus. Remember Mrs. Dent, second grade, who</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">taught us nimbostratus, cumulus, and we, thinking that was all</div>
<div class="line">there was, hung from monkey bars, skipped rope, stole home?</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/ThompsonFire.mp3"></audio></figure>

23 Miners Dead at Century Mine

Poets Respond

Katabasis

Bootleg Fire

<div class="line">I’d like to find her.</div>
<div class="line">Compare notes.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line"><i>Which of us got lucky?</i></div>
<div class="line">I’d like to know</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">why? My parents</div>
<div class="line">could have been</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">hers but something</div>
<div class="line">fell through—as in</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">the rabbit hole,</div>
<div class="line">as in <i>next in line?</i>—</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line"><i>step up to somebody’s</i></div>
<div class="line"><i>game or the funny papers.</i></div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Or, nothing fell.</div>
<div class="line">God just said</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">“oops.” He’s only</div>
<div class="line">God, after all.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">When it was said</div>
<div class="line">&amp; done, I was in</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">so she was out;</div>
<div class="line">out of luck</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line3">or lucky?</div>


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May 4, 2024Psalm for Working WomenLynne Thompson

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May 4, 2024Psalm for Working WomenLynne Thompson

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