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 *******, 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/

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.

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/

Precipio


Beneath the cherubs of Basilica di

Santa Maria Maggiore, St. Frances of

Assisi inculcates the embroidered

    Il tuo sorriso è l’alba che ** perso questa mattina

word of God, threaded into centuries

of artwork extinction, rehabilitated

into the minds of a museum, where

we cannot touch, only to distinguish,

what is ours, what is there’s, why

we must perderò  understand the

implications of sunrises bringing

another day of God to teach.

Our loss of Nativity is

freestanding figures

brought on by time.

...

I was invited to read poems as a response to Ann Hamilton's exhibit at the Spencer Museum of Art. Read more about this event here: (This poem is actually shaped like a face, but I can't get the lines to stay, but you can see the actual shape at the link)

http://shannonathompson.com/2013/04/19/reading-event-ann-hamilton-at-the-spencer-museum-of-art/

I hear the Bechstein


a blushed blur of universal vibrancy, constructed

……….of covered caution, a colored dream—a

……….dance.

a pressed curl of waxen connections, torn

……….over a rumbled boast, teetered to time—a

……….transition.

……….Folded space, a future chase.

……….The movers and risers pull the views out of

place before anyone can                          see.

……………………………momentarily

...


I was invited to read poems as a response to Ann Hamilton's exhibit at the Spencer Museum of Art. Read more about this event here:

http://shannonathompson.com/2013/04/19/reading-event-ann-hamilton-at-the-spencer-museum-of-art/

In a world where traumas are written all over our bodies


He has a bipolar jaw line and a suicidal knee cap,

collapsing and shaking

and reverberating his thoughts through his PTSD lip.

It quivers, and she looks away with an autistic eyelid.

See her a deaf cheek?

Their blind foreheads fluctuate, and their arthritic fingers vibrate.

Reynard’s Disease. Or Disorder IV. Perhaps,

one we’ve never heard before consumes the heart that’s about to break.

....

This was read at the University of Kansas in May of 2013: Read more about this event here:

http://shannonathompson.com/2013/05/10/contest-winners-and-poetry-from-my-ku-reading/

Terror-rium


We had an aquarium

A river, a lake, a sea.

On our desk—the ocean.

Our exotic fish, fished

from the very river, lake, or

sea which we have now.

On our desk—we provide forage,

food, plants, water, and fish.

The aquarium had us.

…

We had an insectarium

An arachnid, an insect, a butter

-fly. On our counter—the air.

Our countertop full of flourishing

flowers, fluttering wings of broken



butterflies, falling from feed, because

they drink—and we pluck their

wings, tape them to tapestries to

stare. Say, how pretty they are.

The insectarium had us

…

We had a terrarium.

A desert, a savannah, a floor of sand.

Our room is lit by a woodland, a

jungle, a place we’ve never been.

African violets decorate our reptiles,

all scales and shells and condensation.

It rains today—the lid which collected

our precipitation. Our pebbled floor,

formed over our marbled kitchen.

The terrarium had us

…

We had an arium,

and we destroyed it

to keep them on our desks,

nuzzled between family portraits and pens,

to remind ourselves of what

We used to have and

what we’ll never have

again, but at least they are

pretty, and no one needs

National Geographic to stare

anymore. We have our countertops.
...

This was read at the University of Kansas on May 10, 2013:

http://shannonathompson.com/2013/05/10/contest-winners-and-poetry-from-my-ku-reading/