Featuring Lynne Thompson, Los Angeles Poet Laureate Emerita (2021-2022)

Melinda Palacio, City of Santa Barbara Poet Laureate

 (an earlier version of this column was published in the Santa Barbara Independent)

A poetry connection I’ve made over the years is with Lynne Thompson, the 2021-2022 Poet Laureate for Los Angeles. I have had the pleasure of reading with Lynne over the past fifteen years. Lynne is the daughter of Caribbean immigrants. To close Black History Month and with permission from the poet, I’d like to share some of Lynne Thompson’s poems here. Her lush poems are playful, sexy, and thought provoking. Of her poetry, Natasha Trethewey says, “Thompson is a poet who revels in language.” Do you have a favorite Lynne Thompson poem? 

 

 

START WITH A SMALL GUITAR

Lynne Thompson

(previously published in Start with a Small Guitar, What Books Press 2013)

 

although you already know:  this was never a real guitar.

What you hear is the melody once resident inside you

and you know this too:  it’s only my silhouette you see

dancing, dancing.  Step into this splendid suggestion or

flotsam.  Then are those my eyes, filling, or yours?

 

 

 

or        start again with a small guitar

 

 

 

Of course, you already know:  this was never a real guitar.

But here are all of my fingers longing to coax its duende.

What you hear is the melody once resident inside you as it escapes, suddenly, and I am there just in time to pluck it

 

 

 

From the innocent air & slip it around my wrist like a cuff.

You must know this too:  it’s only my silhouette you see

Dancing, dancing.  Step into it:  this splendid suggestion,

this flotsam.  Then, are those my eyes, filling?    Yours?

 

 

 

 

I ASK THE MALAGASY

Lynne Thompson

(from Beg No Pardon, Perugia Press 2007)

 

 

Where are my ancestors buried?

    In the feathers of a yellow bird.

 

How do you remember me?

    As seven wishes.

 

Where will I find the shape-changers’ magic?

    In fields of hydrangea.

 

Who teaches your tantara?

    A fox behind closed doors.

 

Where are your elephant birds?

    In ruby and absinthe afternoons.

 

And where is the sawfish beak?

    In the dayshine of trees.

 

How deep is your river Betsiboka?

    Twelve earthquakes deep.

 

What time did your soil turn red?

    When calves bent their knees . . . . .

 

 

ELEGY FOR THE RED DRESS

Lynne Thompson

(from Beg No Pardon, Perugia Press 2007)

 

 

 

Good morning, Red Dress,

double strand of pearls, faded rose

perfume clinging to the bodice,

the slip, the silk of the sleeve;

molten to my hips, my breasts, 

the drum of my heart, hem

softly pleated to a permanent party. 

 

 

Hello and hey there, Red Dress—

heavy with seat

of Love Wants to Dance.  Scented

with hopes of Shy Man, Bold Man,

Begged-to-take-you-home Man.

Still crumply down the back

From the hanker in their hands.

 

 

 

BALLAD FOR YESTERDAYS

Lynne Thompson

(from Beg No Pardon, Perugia Press 2007)

 

 

 

 

Buzzing like a hawk over high

cotton—in a trance—I saw you

 

where human lust is electrical, all 

gyration and heartbreak, a July’d

 

moon and sun. Drowsy with beauty,

we spooned in sweet, fallow fields so

 

which of us is more mad?    (Or is this

melancholy just a corn cob dipped 

 

in red roux?)  Still, we were lovebirds.

Perhaps we invented our own jazz;

 

Sweets, we were mornings’ glitter.

And yes, there were afternoons of scat,

 

of bee-bop.  But there is no loving that

won’t splinter from itself and we know

 

time is just a honey dripper. Yet, I’m all 

dreams and hunger all these years later.