Two Poems by Taunja Thompson

Three of t.m. thomson’s poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards. She is co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky (2017) and author of Strum and Lull (2019), which placed in Golden Walkman’s 2017 chapbook competition, and The Profusion (2019). Her passions include kickboxing, playing in mud, and savoring art.

​Feeding Klimt
​
Saw a photo of him holding a cat.
He wore an old smock
and his hair was artist-wild
except in the center
where his scalp held one little
curl-wisp.
He wore a slight smile and his eyes
were earnest and almost crossed
like the eyes of the masked cat
in his arms.

If he and his homely but kind face
were to show up
at my house
I’d check his ribs
to see if he was too skinny.
I’d run a comb through hair
and beard to chase out
any fleas.
I’d say there there
you can live here
among the poppies and sunflowers
reposing under the apple tree
when it gets hot.
They are undoubtedly much like
the ones you’ve sown elsewhere
on other canvases—bold
and clustered with baby’s breath
and sun and shaded
by a green and gold mosaic
of trees.

I’d give him the run of yard and field
the shelter of eave and even
my house with an open door policy.
He’d rub against my ankles
smile up at me
speak a language
I could not understand
and soon miss
his rambling ways
his starry-haired mermaids
his wild-eyed Athena.​

I’d send him on his way
with a kiss
and a hope he’d be back for dinner
sometime.



Good Friday
(for Ben)

What a holy day--
drift of hydrangea mud
the color of an eye
grey pearl sky brindled
with clouds.
Wind stirs me--
sigh of still-bare branches
pulsing others weighed down by magenta-
opal-vermillion an embarrassment
of petals then raised sharply
by snaps of gales.
That shock of gardenias--
a holy ghost
of fragrance
fern fronds— supplicants
of soil
and the leaves of daylilies--
breeze thaws them
so that they ripple
green flames
promising.

And all those years ago
on a day such as this
you and I sat at Perkins
and you charmed me
by knowing the name
of the table’s pattern--
rossetta boomerang
you said. Something
holy in the red
squiggles
always turning back
on themselves
as if chased by breeze
amid a roseate
spring.