Last week on the Poetry Chain, Cassie Donish shared a lovely poem that brought people who had previously doubted the whole Poetry Chain idea around to loving the idea of the Poetry Chain.
This week, I believe Ms. Donish chose wisely. Here's what she has to say about her choice:
Jay Thompson is a Seattle expatriate going to school in St. Louis. His writing is by turns bold, experimental, and tender. He co-edits the journal Thermos. He has poems, interviews, and essays in (or forthcoming in) The Laurel Review, Cranky, Mare Nostrum, La Fovea, LitRag, and Poetry International, and he has a long study of the neglected New York School poet Barbara Guest forthcoming in Pleiades. He writes a weekly column on poetics and literature at the Kenyon Review's blog (kenyonreview.org/blog). He co-curates the Exploding Swan reading series, and he plays in a band called the Shitty Friends
For what it's worth, the image for this week's Poetry Chain was supplied by Mr. Thompson. He says it's "the cover of the last issue of Pathfinder Chronicles to contain one of my Dungeons & Dragons stories." That's totally fucking endearing, if you ask me.
Here's Jay Thompson's poem:
Crescent MoonThat was the year
of shy electoral admixture
when states dripped purple
wine fortified mall-boutique honey
and beneath the throb
of three whiskey-and-gingers I
mistook the moon for
my friend Nina source
cloven from image Nina
whose mom cooked her
own thin bathtub meth
head hollerer of our
whole noir teens while
we sewed and watched
HBO horror movies Nina
so sweet we screamed
to punk rock mixtapes
swore off cooking off
tweaking Nina split for
Eugene in the summer
of what ’99 sober-swift
not really writing letters
the moon’s red-white profile
unobscured the park zoo
illuminated the young giraffes
citified surviving their origins
still up cropping mulberries
lavender marl slimness a
self hovering in between
the moon’s milk-braids swinging
from its fire head
fire to fathom a
fire that isn’t fate
Many thanks to Cassie Donish and to Jay Thompson, and don't forget to tune in next Friday at noon to see who Mr. Thompson chooses for the next link in the Seattle Poetry Chain.
