PRATIK LA ISSUE SPECIAL : LOS ANGELES POET LAUREATE LYNNE THOMPSON POEM, "Approach, memory"

 

LYNNE THOMPSON

 

Approach, memory 

 

 

As if I am ready

 

As if I am no longer seed

separated from her tree

 

As if any long, black night

 has her own intentions

 (although I am no longer

 bound by them)

As if I am a clock in Dali’s

 Persistence of Memory

 dripping from

 a thin, nude bark     then

 

Come with cumulus

in  your hands

 

Come as the stranger you

are to find me stranger still

 

Still, when you arrive,

notice the end of what was

just moments before

 

As you approach, ask what

is that scent: sky or rosemary

wet dog or wild hanker?

 

Lynne Thompson’s manuscript, Fretwork, was selected by Jane Hirshfield as the winner of the 2018 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize. Thompson’s also the author of Start With A Small Guitar and Beg No Pardon. Recent work appears in New England Review, Pleiades, and Colorado Review. She sits on the Boards of Directors of the Los Angeles Review of Books and Cave Canem.   Lynne Thompson was appointed Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles in February 2021.

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