Category: Jeffrey Thomson

Two Halves of the Skull of John the Baptist

Vandal Poem of the Day: November 7, 2022

 by Jeffrey Thomson

transparent crystal, facial sections of a human head, silver plate
Amiens Cathedral, France, and the Basilica di San Silvestro in Capite, Rome

he was not the one
Salome wanted
he wore
his head
a goat’s skin
she was the one
the one
who cried
John
in her wilderness
he lived in
a palace
a wild desert
of moon
he was the coming of
there is always
the light
another
light shone
she was the one
in his face
who took his head
he called the dove
she looked
down
upon his head
he was not the one
shoulder bare
who walked
bright
into a Jerusalem
the silver
paved with palms
spun with
there is always
moonlight
another

from Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in PurgatoryFind more by Jeffrey Thomson at the library
Copyright © 2022 Jeffrey Thomson

Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

The Tale of the Grief Stopper

Vandal Poem of the Day: October 21, 2022

The Tale of the Grief Stopper
 by Jeffrey Thomson

A stone created by this river is called the pausilypos. Anyone grieving
who finds this stone is immediately relieved of the pain which holds him.
 —Pseudo-Plutarch

On the day another boy
was shot, I took a stone
from this river. On the day
I heard his name, I lifted it.
I held it. It glittered
in the summer sun.
Aspens fluttered.
Cicadas thrummed.
I caressed its small, soft
skull. The boy was six-
years-old. He was
at a garlic festival
when he was shot.
Greeks placed bulbs
of garlic on cairns
at cross-roads—a gift
for Hecate—as protection
from demons.

It was the son of Poseidon
who threw himself
into this river when
his own son marched
against his neighbors
and was killed. He was
held down by water,
by the water’s hands
which are not hands
the way water is not grief.
His grief turned the river.
Now all we have are stones.
They are hard and small
like something in my shoe.
Like someone is walking
on my soul. He was six-
years-old. The river
is dry now.
The water is gone.
Aspens quake
in the bright air.
Cicadas crackle.
All that’s left
are stones.

from Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in PurgatoryFind more by Jeffrey Thomson at the library
Copyright © 2022 Jeffrey Thomson

Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

Skull of a Young Tightrope Walker Who Died of a Broken Neck, 1934

Vandal Poem of the Day: October 17, 2022

 by Jeffrey Thomson

human skull, glass

Mudder Museum, Philadelphia
I     am     more
than        those
last     seconds
wobble      and
then            the
evaporation
of             hope
grace     on    a
wire     I     was
once
elegance
perfect
wonder
almost
falling            is
harder      than
not       anyone
can     walk     a
wire           only
the   best   can
pretend        to
fall                for
nothing’s
easier        than
failure
there’s
a    quick    grip
on    the    stale
absence
of the air
then ground
living is hard
hard     is      an
only           child
making
a  pieta   in  his
mother’s
arms   hard   is
a           mother
walking
away

from Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in PurgatoryFind more by Jeffrey Thomson at the library
Copyright © 2022 Jeffrey Thomson

Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

Han Solo in Carbonite

Vandal Poem of the Day: September 27, 2022

by Jeffrey Thomson

“I will not give up my favorite decoration”—Jabba

adorns the wall in the palace
with a small regalia of dials
and knobs he is well-lit
gallery style is elegant is

tasteful he has found a small
peaceful alcove of his own
heroism to hang in in
beautiful stasis beside the
gore and tilt of his everyday
life for he has run every day
from the empire of his own
choices his whole story a
version of the word escape
we have all watched so many
times we know the story by
heart so when he walks into
that contraption at the end
of the film the descent into
flashing lights and smoke
into technology and
Chewbacca howling we see it
is his last free step even
though he will escape the
carbonite and return he is
still in that moment he is art
in that lonely lovely alcove
of a desert palace

from Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in PurgatoryFind more by Jeffrey Thomson at the library

The Foot of Mary Magdalene

Vandal Poem of the Day: September 12, 2022

 by Jeffrey Thomson

Silver, glass, bone

the church of San Giovanni Battista, Rome

When they were set afloat
in a boat without sail or rudder
in the sea off of Galilee—
their lord dead, risen, and gone—
it wasn’t a metaphor.

The sea shone hot and greasy
with summer. Fish perhaps
leapt up ladders of their own
bodies to climb into the mouths
of Magdalene, Lazarus still
stinking of death, and Martha,
her servant heart waiting
to be called.

 Some people say
they landed in France, some
in Ephesus, that place of mystery.
Some people say Magdalene
lived thirty years in a cave,
was fed bread and water
through the window by Martha
until her body became a box
of glass.
Or she was raised
into the sky by an angelic chorus
and fed the nectar of heaven
that tasted of certainty and stone.
Or she traveled to Rome and
brought an egg to Caesar
Tiberius, a red egg. Rebirth
and all that.
But after her death
they divided her, these
same people, a tooth there,
a jawbone here, her arm
in London. But here in
Rome rests her foot:
elegant, thin, silver-bronze
as scales, frozen and glamorous
as a fish made of stone.

Such division was unsurprising.
Mary, really, she was used
to it. But back in the boat,
their feet burning on the hot
staves, they are still wondering,
the three of them, where they will
land, what they will do without him.
The hot sun, the water, and still
the fish leap into their mouths
like answers to questions
they have not yet learned to ask.

from Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in PurgatoryFind more by Jeffrey Thomson at the library
Copyright © 2022 Jeffrey Thomson

Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.