Two Poems
Marjorie Thomsen


To An Old Shipwreck

You said shipwrecked was a verb
you needed to be. Of heavy vessel
you meant gauzy, a self divisible by
breeze. Of trawling, you meant hands,
not green-roped net; you meant delicate,
to gather sweetgrass for basketry. Of
East you meant West. Of belvedere
you meant from deep and dark. Going
down, leaving the pink, was for unmatched
blessitude, in sinking and in rest. Of legend,
of attendant, of body, in sincerity you meant
to give me that which you gave: charged
feeling. What’s meant is I want only
to die at the exact depth as you.



At the Louvre

​Here we’re waifs
among the sphinxes, passions, centaurs

all under white light funneled
and filtered in controlled zones.

Skin of a cold hard belly
is scentless on the statue

of the Winged Victory of Samothrace
descending upon the prow of a ship.

(Impossible to smell the sea
on marble.) My friend says you have to

make love right before visiting
the masterpieces—they’re so devoid of breath,

some headless, un-sweet and distant
with secrets. He says he needs it on him

to understand, to even begin
to reckon with the still dimensions.










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About the Author: Marjorie Thomsen is the author of the poetry collection, Pretty Things Please (Turning Point, 2016). She received the Firman Houghton award from the New England Poetry Club and was awarded first prize in The University of Iowa’s School of Social Work national poetry contest. Her poems have been published in One (Jacar Press), Poetry Breakfast, and Word Riot, among others. Her poems are inspired from the landscapes of New England, where she currently lives, and from the south, where she was raised.
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