Crow’s Nest

No one is around
as the body settles
the body as it loves 
cabinetry 
and black beds of salt
a township in rural Illinois
the body as it looks 
at moths
filling up the pantry
with their heat
and soon my hip slides out
but I can’t stop reading
about cruelty
I am afraid 
of getting home 
and I am sorry 
for all the same things 
What I have here 
isn’t a special want 
It is what 
you might call me 
In front of the animals 
as animals are 
and tend to do  
You couldn’t leave now
even if you wanted to
You never expect
the ice shelf collapsing
All this is
is a calling out to you
because with you
I might be able
to take this

from Observatories

While I am a moving object
I am a system
in the world

and did not get the signal

In groupings of ants in the kitchen,
the darkness of them,
I am going to sound
very certain about something

I am coming over

I like commentary, narration
and need to say where things are from

to wake up and call you
by a different name

                             ~

If I have this dream
it means I’m thinking about you   

and if I trust some navigation
by sunlight                               
by ancient instruments
where’s the magic in that

Do you notice
my hand on my chin
looking back on
harbingers

are you still with me

You don’t begin to say
a word, you say it

When he has lucid days
please call us

                             ~

This must count as victory:      
a green pulse beneath the snow            
this momentary
overcoming

I, looking back, wonder at your satisfying
the edge of a sleeve
on film
I surmise
we would have been magical
In the wake of early snow

No more summer
to build
where there is no fall

                             ~

To be in that case
To have lost footing
What signal am I making
to you this cloud
in camp

After some time the soldier cried
but not this one time
you know this

that at the station he kissed
the coffee cart girl
kissed the black
on her teeth and mouth
and on her skirt
black handprints
the tickertape

No whooping or hollering here
only the radio timed out

his right hand aching
against the coffee cup
and will not shoot again

                             ~

One more figure,
this one of drones
overhead, too much for
your ladder of light:

all our recent frights
a node in the system
a wanting to heal this
fear of the sky

where the same soldier
in france
was bivouacked with others
where on thanksgiving
they gathered by chance

where blown apart
they opened out
like a field  

Gale Marie Thompson is the author of Soldier On (Tupelo Press, forthcoming) and the chapbooks If You’re a Bear, I’m a Bear (H_NGM_N, 2013) and Expeditions to the Polar Seas (Sixth Finch, 2013). Her work can be found in Best New Poets 2012, Coconut, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Volt, Salt Hill, diode, H_NGM_N, and others. She lives in Athens, Georgia, where she is a PhD student at the University of Georgia. She is also creator and editor of Jellyfish Magazine, and works at the Georgia Review.