New Year’s Celebration
Among mad men in drowning corridors,
built on rusty foundations,
tethered to rotting, sugar-coated
grins, and nestled in the trashcan
of our neighbor’s backyard –
a candle we cannot see burns
out over the mountains, the
ones draped in vacation photographs,
the same set your kitten is named after,
a geological setting, a historical
lesson, a discipline of chances
strewn into another’s handshake
sweat left on the public
bathroom door handle, a smudge
of lipstick left on the countertop,
next to powder – a scene
unimagined for nonexistent detectives.
In a drunken state, we decide to play
Gunshots or Fireworks?
And we laugh when we are wrong.
Jan 1, 2015
Jan 1, 2015 at 2:07 AM UTC
Published in The Quill on November 19, 2014:
http://www.amazon.com/Quill-Fall-2014-ebook/dp/B00PNVT6PG
...
On being overweight (whatever that means)
Even if you were the moon, they would complain about how much space you took up in the sky, how you were too bright, wanted too much from the stars, demanded more light than the others.
And when you shifted, from waning to full to waxing to waning, they would remind you of how instable you were, how much of a hassle it was to keep track of your instability, your need for attention. Have you tried to be a vegan yet? All the stars are doing it.
You have tried. In fact, last week was your third try – an attempt, they call it – not enough, they emphasize, try again, they say this as if it is encouragement.
That’s when you found them - the celestial crescent, the earthshine, the perilune, how the lacus are lakes without lakes, why the Gibbous is brighter either way, especially during conjunction – all strung together in pearls.
You are a full the night you return.
As you reflect off the lake, you see Selene, Hecate, Mani, Tsukuyomi, Iah, and Thoth. You tell the stars to look, to breathe your reflection, to succumb to the glow and the beauty of it all, that you are not alone—
They laugh.
Say how historical that is, how out-of-touch you are, how myths aren’t mirrors, how you - you are not a mystery at all.
But when you died – if you died – (we still do not know) - they do not wonder where you went. They spin, spin, spin the entire night home, only once confessing to how empty the sky is without your shine.
But every night they burn.
Nov 26, 2014
Nov 26, 2014 at 4:03 PM UTC
Published in The Quill on November 19, 2014:
http://www.amazon.com/Quill-Fall-2014-ebook/dp/B00PNVT6PG
...
To my Mother – 5643 days after your death
I still count the days, the amount of candles we burned, our unmade faces and her foamy latte – the kind with a drawn on design for no particular reason (other than to brag.)
I don’t worry about the perfume – the smell I do not remember – but I do open the windows, every. other. day.
The sunlight doesn’t burn anymore. My eyes still close. The moonlight blurs after hours of consciousness, and her dog’s birthday comes and comes and never stops but will. One day. Mine will never. Not at this rate. Although the calendar flips faster than I didn’t want it to, even though I did.
Nov 26, 2014
Nov 26, 2014 at 4:02 PM UTC
Glitter Rain shimmers outside my lightning window
and winds a dream—weather of dreams and nightmares,
a reign of indifference somewhere in between the windowpane,
the widow pain, and the windy plain—to whisper possibilities
into the nice night of nostalgic friends, wishing friendships hadn’t
ended, knowing it had to end, glad it did end, ignoring the ending
of all this time, ticking away in the timely thunderstorm of the
night.
...
Viktor Aurelius read four of my poems on Whispers in the Dark Radio, a horror poetry show.
...
Nov 11, 2014
Nov 11, 2014 at 3:48 PM UTC
This Waiting Place
The can of still is entirely sick.
Windows shatter and trucks collide
Threatens the over, yet becomes the not
Of which, of one, can you speak for?
.............I’ve never felt this way before.
Because glass gives reflections until it
Breaks.
Give me the pieces, the shards, the dust.
Let me take what I can take and walk away
With the shame of fault, the guilt of unknowing.
since analyzing the bodies won’t bring them back.
Limbo of shock or grey of wanting.
Since the can of answers can be given to the dead.
...
Viktor Aurelius read four of my poems on Whispers in the Dark Radio, a horror poetry show.
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 6:39 PM UTC
Inn-Sum-Knee-Ah (“Insomnia”)
I throw words at the ceiling fan
to break them apart over
the bleeding sheep on the carpet.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Pepper it over the bodies
while the fur is still waving
to the wind of the artificial air.
Five Six Seven Eight
My back cracks more than the
tocking insanity of the creak-squeak-squawk
crocked blame of the spinning blades above me.
I still can’t breathe.
Nine ten eleven twelve
The purple spot on the wall wanders between the bitter
clouds and the rocking streetlamps that wink,
as if to welcome me with “We are not sleeping either.”
But we will watch.
Thirteenfourteen.
That might be a good thing if I didn’t have my eyes closed,
burning from the inside out.
Fifteen. Sixtheen. Seventh
Sleep.
...
Viktor Aurelius read four of my poems on Whispers in the Dark Radio, a horror poetry show.
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 4:46 PM UTC
You
You are every bouquet left on graves.
You are the prayers of grievers. You are
the naïve spectators pretending, the tears
of those who haven’t lost. You are eyes
forcing yourself to look away. You’re the addiction
of a mother sitting on a trunk that hides medications.
You are the choice to overdose.
You’re the fear of two orphaned children,
wondering where they will be forced to go next. You
are the tragedy. You’re a simple combination of pills.
At the funeral they pray your death is like a novel, memorable yet learned from. You are like a novel. Events that end in a planned conclusion.
You are that second before the last pill, the medication,
an array of medication, a combination of medication, the last breath. You are the ***** of your husband’s soaking
into the carpet. You are a cry of a child
caused by the scare of a naïve nightmare.
The entire graveyard grieves with you.
...
I read at the University of Kansas during their Undergraduate Reading Series. Read more about this event here:
http://shannonathompson.com/2013/02/11/my-undergraduate-reading/
Nov 3, 2014
Nov 3, 2014 at 6:46 PM UTC
Injuries
My ankles are burned left and right, and my knees are probably scraped somewhere. I sit straight, not to be polite, but because my spine muscles were ripped—in a car wreck. Everyone was all right. But I still feel it when it rains.
And since I was eleven, my wrist snaps like this SNAP Every. Day.
And my cat has scratched me one too many times. Lovers see my skinned back, and the scars of my arm or the twitch behind my left eye. But no one notices my split middle finger, the one I broke in half. And I have no scar where my heart shattered in my late teens. Or on my lips from bile on that day, this day, yesterday, or tomorrow.
You cannot see the death of my loved ones from my skin, and my ears don’t bleed from broken promises. My eyes aren’t forever affected by the tears that felt like forever, and my voice doesn’t sound different because I screamed at her one too many times.
I’m not dead because someone else is dead, but sometimes my heart doesn’t feel like it’s there as my injuries reflect my body, they reflect nothing inside.
...
I read at the University of Kansas during their Undergraduate Reading Series. Read more about this event here:
http://shannonathompson.com/2013/02/11/my-undergraduate-reading/
Nov 1, 2014
Nov 1, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC
What I Wanted to Wear for Halloween
…is not what you wanted me to wear for Halloween.
I wanted to be one of those girls in the comic books,
spinning around in high-heeled boots, high-strung ponytails, and miniskirts.
You convinced me to be Mulan.
It was the 90’s, after all.
And she was pretty cool. I guess.
I loved it more when I realized she had a sword. I planned to cut my hair with it.
But when I asked for her sword, you handed me a fan, told me to have fun with my friends.
My best friend wore a real kimono that year – all thick and purple and bright –
her father brought it back from Japan.
We were both Mulan. I guess.
But she loved her fan and silk and uppy hair up-do.
Mine had already taken a tumble for the worse.
And that is exactly what I see, many years later, as I stare in the mirror – finally in my boots.
I keep them on when I sit at the keyboard and type in her name
M-U-L-A-N
The truth comes after H-U-A
After twelve years of fighting, and dying, and winning, and fighting by her side,
China didn’t even know she was a woman.
They couldn’t have cared less at all.
Oct 31, 2014
Oct 31, 2014 at 2:29 PM UTC
Hom-ouses
1. Allentown, Pennsylvania. A cream-colored home with reddened shutters. Age 0 to 1. Only known from photographs, the street blew up one decade later during a gas leak. The neighborhood was evacuated. No one died, but you’ll never see your first home, except for your first eyes, ever again.
2. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Age 2-3. A one-floor home with a cement tornado shelter—something straight out of the Wizard of Oz or Twister—in the backyard, right beneath the clothesline, your great grandmother, Juanita, still used to break chickens’ necks rather than wash your toddler clothes.
3. Green Bay, Wisconsin. Age 4-6. A two-floor suburban home, built at the top of a hill which iced over frequently in the blizzards. Your brother jumped from the tears, and played with your husky dog, before picking flowers for the first and only bus driver you’d ever have.
4. Atlanta & Alpharetta, Georgia. Age 7-9. You were a minority, and you lived in a brick house, built atop a mound of red-brick clay. You made your first friends—a catholic, a reader, and two black girls. None of them were allowed to see one another, so you had to choose which. You hated girl scouts—but your dad had an addiction for discounted cookies and calendars.
5. Kansas. Age 10-21. You’ve lived in four different parts, but it’s close enough to return to the house your grandfather died in (by smacking his head on the toilet) or the house your mother died in one year later (by a drug overdose) or the house your husky dog died by (drowning in the lake) or any other house someone died in, even the most recent. At least you published a book and got a cat.
....
I read this at the University of Kansas during their Undergraduate Reading Series. Read more about this event here:
http://shannonathompson.com/2013/02/11/my-undergraduate-reading/
Oct 30, 2014
Oct 30, 2014 at 11:46 AM UTC