Sample Poems by Nancy Thompson

Prayer 1

Are you blind? Lay down
your white cane, set your dog
free, stumble and fall
up and down curbs, let the shrill blare of horns
and curses of jostled people
ring in your ears.

Are you mute? Tear
open your throat,
let blood gush forth,
slit your trachea with a penknife
and breathe in,
close the hole with your forefinger and thumb,
and speak.

Are you cold? Cast off
your clothes, stagger through the streets
like a drunk at Mardi Gras.
What you want is nothing less
than to catch a hummingbird
with your bare hands.
Nothing familiar or expected
lets you stroke that jeweled, shimmering green,
will let that tiny magnificent heart beat
against your open palms.

Curing Paralysis

Elusive and unreliable as it is, the wise man straightens out his restless, agitated mind, like a fletcher crafting an arrow. (33)

Tonight a woman says she is plagued.
Thoughts of women, children,
men she does not know batter her mind
like memories of stillborn babies,
car-struck dogs, lovers’
betrayals. She wails for those
who do not know she’s wailing,

and suddenly I want to howl, too,
recollecting a self who cringed
from the hunger of gaunt children
on 34th Street,
who wanted to strip the world
of guns and bombs,
rescue battered cats.

The arousal of thoughts is sickness;
not continuing them, medicine;

tonight, I want this woman
to infect me.

Illusions

It is not the shortcomings of others, nor what others have done or not done that one should think about, but what one has done or not done oneself. (50)

The morning Gandhi gave up
his khadi, pulled on khakis
and a broadcloth shirt,
he looked like any other lawyer
waiting at the bus stop,
and was. His glance in my direction,
sharp as any razor,
seemed to say
You forgot your lipstick,
which was true—

but Gandhi would not have cared about
Taro Red. Gandhi
would have cared about the deal
going down across the street, the matted-haired man
unsuccessfully begging for a quarter; or Doug
from the third floor, who died in the doorway
before I could give him the three-dollar fish
and goldfish bowl he craved. No,
he was not Gandhi,
and the two Japanese girls
who sat atop the bus stop bench

and chatted on their cell phones
were not calling Mothra, and I knew then

that in the afternoon,
just like every afternoon,
Godzilla would land atop the helicopter pad
or tear down the streets
flashing blue and red,
while I walked on
with a painted smile, eyes ahead.

Cormorant Fishing

A deed is well done if one does not suffer after doing it, if one experiences the consequences smiling and contented. (68)

His face unclear in the lantern’s
pale-blonde light, the fisherman
weights his narrow boat
into the current,
opens the crates
and sings their names.
Dark and slim-necked cormorants
launch themselves
over the side,
spear the water and dive.

A long breath later they return,
proffer their necks. The fisherman
throttles carp
from each of their gullets—
freed, they dive again,

the cords around their necks
barely visible; tight guards
letting only sips of air,
the smallest fish
slip through.