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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