Maureen Thorson
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maureenthorson.bsky.social
Maureen Thorson
@maureenthorson.bsky.social
900 followers 360 following 920 posts
Poet person. Check out my new interview with Colorado Review: https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/2025/10/a-conversation-with-maureen-thorson/
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maureenthorson.bsky.social
“Pink static runs on moonbeams.” A poem by Jane Zwart.
Pink Noise Machine The ear knows the river— even the river made methodical, flumed and dammed— from an untuned radio. It knows white noise, an oxbow bolo of electric burs, from pink. Pink static runs on moonbeams. Consider the ocean, its sough, its surf.A lunar crank spins water into waves and slides tides in and out. The ear knows families of sounds. It knows the motor that pocks mute night from the tranquil growl of swells and rills and westerlies. Only pink can a current sound like envelopes rattling their cellophane windows the nights your dad paid bills.
January 28, 2026 at 1:27 AM
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“But this rough magic I here abjure.” A poem by Ted Berrigan.
A FINAL SONNET for Chris How strange to be gone in a minute! A man Signs a shovel and so he digs. Everything Turns into writing a name for a day Someone is having a birthday and someone is getting married and someone is telling a joke my dream a white tree I dream of the code of the west But this rough magic I here abjure and When I have required some heavenly music which even now I do to work mine end upon their senses That this aery charm is for I'll break My staff bury it certain fathoms in the earth And deeper than did ever plummet sound I’ll drown my book. It is 5:15 a.m. Dear Chris, hello.
January 27, 2026 at 1:01 AM
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“There is a jail inside of me.” A poem by Fanny Howe.
THERE IS There is a jail inside of me it is a holy space glove-filled for the individual baby (a soul rewarded and destroyed) Here like a frost of liquid nitrogen the rain slides over the wires in a thin water-cover —one more fitting paler for the real prisoners.
January 26, 2026 at 1:40 AM
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“No government cares what you do with them.” A poem by Russell Edson.
Angels BY RUSSELL EDSON They have little use. They are best as objects of torment. No government cares what you do with them. Like birds, and yet so human . . . They mate by briefly looking at the other. Their eggs are like white jellybeans. Sometimes they have been said to inspire a man to do more with his life than he might have. But what is there for a man to do with his life? . . . They burn beautifully with a blue flame. When they cry out it is like the screech of a tiny hinge; the cry of a bat. No one hears it . . .
January 25, 2026 at 1:54 AM
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“It’s hard to look straight at his gleaming.” A poem by Paula Cisewski.
Remember how Theseus slayed the minotaur and saved the tributes from the labyrinth largely because Ariadne handed him that string but next thing he ditched her on some island yeah The King of Wands is the king of wants he's hot for everyone it's hard to look straight at his gleaming success teeth they're all fire like the rest of him sincerely able and offering to rescue us all even if we didn't ask we believe so hard we burn our own problems down to please The King who is like our cool brother with a crown on a real natural we dare never ask to borrow his things a day will come he will sail away from Us Heartbroken Saved a little royal ourselves now glowing in the ashes the embers of victory
January 24, 2026 at 1:43 AM
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“What you want in an oyster is immediacy.” A poem by Katie Naughton.
Debt Ritual: Oysters By Katie Naughton buy the oysters anyway each night you spend in the city and not home in an apartment alone costs upwards of fifty dollars and for what it's worth oysters are mostly labor a man at a counter crushed ice this skill not out of place in a Whitman poem what you want in an oyster is immediacy brine of a small ocean and the time to occupy the texture and material of this one moment of your life the brightness in the dark red leather banquettes gin and lemon silk suede and weather the refractions in the water it isn't right exactly to want what money has
January 23, 2026 at 2:34 AM
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“You haven't swallowed reality yet.” A poem by Diane Wakoski.
The Night A Sailor Came to Me in a Dream At the point of shining feathers, that moment when dawn ran her finger along the knife edge sky; at the point when chickens come out of the living room rug to peck for corn and the grains like old yellow eyes roll as marbles across the loor; at that sweet sprouting point when the seed of day rests on your tongue, and you haven't swallowed reality yet. Then, then, yes, at that instant of shimmering new pine needles came a dream, a blister from a new burm, and you walked in, old times, no player piano or beer, reality held my toes, the silver ball of sleep was on my stomach, the structure of dream, like a harness lowered over my head, around me, and I cannot remember what you said, though the harbor was foggy, and your pea coat seemed to drip with moisture. Thirty years of travelling this ocean. Perhaps you told me you were not dead.
January 22, 2026 at 2:32 AM
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“Believe in this. Young apple seeds.” A poem by Bob Kaufman.
Believe, Believe BY BOB KAUEMAN Believe in this. Young apple seeds, In blue skies, radiating young breast, Not in blue-suited insects, Infesting society's garments. Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz, Tearing the night into intricate shreds, Puting it back together again, In cool logical patterns, Not in the sick controllers, Who created only the Bomb. Let the voices of dead poets Ring louder in your ears Than the screechings mouthed In mildewed editorials. Listen to the music of centuries, Rising above the mushroom time.
January 21, 2026 at 1:22 AM
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“You have lipstick on your collar.” A poem by Anthony Opal.
Sonnet BY ANTHONY OPAL you have lipstick on your collar I say to my father the priest that's just the Blood of Christ my son he replies by and by (the milky thigh of Mary in my mind) William Blake's eyes aligning in the snow a statue outside London simply called "The Heretic" where birds sit and shit and live out their days in unconscious praise of that third space between language and the mute object as sunlight pours through the stained glass at the Lincoln Park Zoo where I saw the lions pacing and you told me to always remember that the cage is for the protection of the captor
January 20, 2026 at 2:04 AM
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Here I am, dreaming in deep January of other seasons… “A purple butterfly rolls its dice.” A poem by Robert Morgan.
PURPLE ASTERS In the months of lavender, late summer and early fall, you notice the first purple puffs on the thistles, and out along the creek and high banks of weeds the joe-pyes lean like giraffes above the undergrowth into tree level. Down by the branch, grass darkens the same color Charlesmagne had his Irish scholars dye their pages for jewelled lettering to play on like cities in the desert sky. A purple butterfly rolls its dice from chicory to burdock to morning glory. And in the ageing fields ironweed opens bright fur to nectar moths. Almost hidden at the edge of upland swamps, lobelia and foxglove shake their sexual pockets around bees. So much royalty and ripeness! Foxgrapes fume the riverwoods, and summer clots its ink in pokeberries in the kingly time of sunsets and honey trees and goldenrod. But all charge and color are concentrated in this northern flower the shade of the underworld and deep space where stars begin, where the violent and ultraviolet become seen dark.
January 19, 2026 at 1:45 AM
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“World is suddener than we fancy it.” A poem (that I post at least once a year, when the weather fits) by Louis MacNeice.
Snow BY LOUIS MACNEICE The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was Spawning snow and pink roses against it Soundlessly collateral and incompatible: World is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various. And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes— On the tongue on the eyes on the cars in the palms of one's hands— There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
January 18, 2026 at 4:23 AM
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“With fawn-brown eyes and toothed gold collar” A poem by Marianne Moore.
NO SWAN SO FINE “No water so still as the dead fountains of Versailles.'" No swan, with swart blind look askance and gondoliering legs, so fine as the chintz china one with fawn- brown eyes and toothed gold collar on to show whose bird it was. Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth candelabrum-tree of cockscomb- tinted buttons, dahlias, sea-urchins, and everlastings, it perches on the branching foam of polished sculptured flowers—at ease and tall. The king is dead.
January 17, 2026 at 1:39 AM
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“You're drinking your parents to the airport” A poem by Bernadette Mayer.
[Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up BY BERNADETTE MAYER You jerk you didn't call me up I haven't seen you in so long You probably have a fucking tan & besides that instead of making love tonight You're drinking your parents to the airport I'm through with you bourgeois boys All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts Only money can get—even Catullus was rich but Nowadays you guys settle for a couch By a soporific color cable t.v. set Instead of any arc of love, no wonder The G.I. Joe team blows it every other time Wake up! It's the middle of the night You can either make love or die at the hands of the Cobra Commander —————————— To make love, turn to page 121. To die, turn to page 172.
January 16, 2026 at 2:53 AM
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“A crocus too stoic to open.” A poem by Jill Alexander Essbaum.
Poem BY JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM A clementine Of inclement climate Grows tart. A crocus Too stoic to open, Won't. Like an oyster That cloisters a spoil of pearls, Untouched— The heart that's had Enough Stays shut.
January 15, 2026 at 2:00 AM
maureenthorson.bsky.social
“Each vowel pitched high as heaven.” A poem by Madisen Gummer.
Madisen Gummer SOUTHERN GOTHIC You can tell a lot about a person by where they think the sky begins. The map in the cafe bathroom still hangs in reverse. Down the road, on the riverbank, the tree we used to jump off is a stump of itself— roots entwined deep in mud and limestone. Australia points to the ceiling, to the dim light. What if Texas was at the top of America? Perhaps it already is. If south is up, then we run down to New York City. Sure, a field could teach us freedom, this river—eternity, but skyscrapers are a lesson in rying to reach god. Despite running, I can't un-tongue my words how Grammie taught me—curving around each vowel, pitched high as heaven. Are we both saying look up? What kisses our eyeballs, fills our noses, reflects off every window, at Jo's Cafe, the Marlow Mercantile, the Chrysler Building—the sky—look up in between cach leaf on the sweetgum tree. Look at all that green.
January 14, 2026 at 12:11 AM
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“A million threads of saffron.” A poem by Jessica Abughattas.
Watching My Mother BY JESSICA ABUGHATTAS Beside the Ford Thunderbird, a suitcase splayed open. She collects her clothes from the driveway. The yellow jumper collapses into a million threads of saffron. She keeps dropping them. They wither and dissolve, petal by petal into pavement. Her hands are rivers. Her eyes, mascara bats. Her hair is crying. I am five and perfect.
January 13, 2026 at 1:30 AM
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“Comparisons must be made.” A poem by Esther Lin.
Esther Lin Comparison My mother stood over my bedside and raked at my nightgown. She said comparisons must be made. The youthful body to the one about to die. I rose and complied. My hair was thick and dark, it wove itself over me. She had no such raiment. Not anymore. What is comparison but the union of two separate beings? All my talents. They were given to me.
January 12, 2026 at 1:32 AM
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“Across the river the low smoke is set.” A poem by Andy Butter.
SLEEP STUDY We saw it: the violinist played so passionately her bow's horsehair heaped near her chair. Afterward the janitor swept it into the trash where it wavered frail as a flag of peace in the county landfill. Across the river the low smoke is set, singed with your blue- edged voice. I know my dreams by their blue, only there is the blue. I'm not saying I'm astounded days later when we saw the horsehair in the blackbird's beak. I’m saying I'm astounded every time I point to the blue sky and say “look,” you look.
January 11, 2026 at 12:41 AM
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“Labored with hydraulics of light.” A poem by Yusef Komunyakaa.
Sperm Oil BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA Housed in a boom of blubber & bone, harpooned six times, the giant grew into a dynamo hitched to six taut rope-lines skipping the boat across waves toward the blurry lighthouse. It bled out a long silence but men in oilskins labored with hydraulics of light on water, walked its flank, & tore it down to a storeroom of Nantucket scrimshaw. Ballast stone or sledge? They bashed in the skull & lowered down the boy to haul up buckets of oil for candles that burned a slow, clean, white glow. At ten, he was almost a man whose feet sank into the waxy muck of ambergris. His sweat dripped into a long hour. Big as a barrel, the head echoed a temple nave.
January 10, 2026 at 1:18 AM
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“Tall woman striding through the wave.” A poem by Raymond McDaniel.
this is the sequence for tea application of ocean to sleep did not arrest her— murmur and perpetual fall in this she could sleep tall woman striding through the wave but after years her first departure a return to forest essence in unmemory she could not sleep without it the churn and wind's lick at the salt so remained awake through murder and annunciation and after cleaning her hands and her hair black ink awash in river water awake for her first meal hungry as if ocean-labored slip of leaves and boiling river water every time I drink I will have this to recall
January 9, 2026 at 2:01 AM
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“An orange star attaches to a moment.” A poem by Heather McHugh.
BOONDOCKS We come from there—that clattering tautology. The boon's the boom—what lowers a load from the tottering sky; the dock's the planks and pilings, strictness of the structures made so we can walk on water, put these franking footholds on the riled-up rookery; the dock's the bracing that the boat is lashed to: tarry trunk, and tacky creosote. An orange star attaches to a moment, waves toward a slo-mo lobe. A finger's inch outruns a yardarm's reach—the boon's the rope, the slip, the pilings, and the sound. We come from there, and we want more. Another ton of sky-stuff winches down.
January 8, 2026 at 1:15 AM
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“The closets brim with winter clothes.” A poem by Michael Bazzett.
THE EMPTY CITY I went to the doctor and found out there is an empty city inside me. The streets are broad and mostly clean. No cars are parked on the boulevards. Trees are few and far between. Why has it been abandoned, this city? Who used to live here, and why did they rush off to the countryside? I admit I was distressed by the news. I had hoped for a mist-cloaked wilderness, or at least a ragged branch of crows. Instead I wander silent apartments. The closets brim with winter clothes. Now I lie awake and wonder: what will they do when the winds of November come and bite through their thin summer dresses?
January 7, 2026 at 1:40 AM
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“I fell into the romance of everything changing.” A poem by Veronica Kornberg.
WINTER WALLOP The mountain fell into the road, the road fell into the sea, cypress fell along the fence line, and I, into reverie. Blue sailboat dissolving in haze, scent of black sage on my sleeve, rocks clack in the backwash. I fell into the romance of everything changing. The way California is always shifting, cracking open new veins of gold, grinding out high peaks. It did not feel like loss, but a wheel turning. I felt this even as my friend lingered in his blue cotton gown, amid mists of antiseptic wash amid the mechanical whoosh. Even then, I studied the landscape and spoke of love though love fell on me, like loss.
January 6, 2026 at 2:22 AM
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“As I crumble I succeed.” A poem by Bill Berkson.
IN A HAND NOT MY OWN A blank wall is singing to be separate rom the rest. It is too mild for the casually attired to be living among their glittery glassine poses. Or else my superstitions are wrong, built sideways from a limb, or anyhow panting. But why fuss? If personality were legal tender, ours would pass for coin of the realm. As it is, not one will stir for the detached, the slow dickering of affect and demise leading to the dustbin at heart. I speak volumes across the rim of a quail. I gisten in footage to smother all currency and as I crumble I succeed, empire-elect of a most honorable science, knowing the babble that toil concludes, condones.
January 5, 2026 at 12:22 AM
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“Your tubes that quiver and cry out.” A poem by Joyce Mansour, translated by Emilie Moorhouse.
"Fever your sex is a crab" BY JOYCE MANSOUR TRANSLATED BY EMILIE MOORHOUSE Fever your sex is a crab Fever the cats feed on your green nipples Fever the quick movement of your lower back The eagerness of your cannibalistic tissues The grip of your tubes that quiver and cry out Tear my leather fingers Snatch at my pistons Fever dead sponge bloated with softness My mouth runs along your horizon A traveler unafraid on a frenzied sea
January 4, 2026 at 1:41 AM