In America's Mirror
By Lynne Thompson

Neither bridge nor trapeze.
Neither absence nor plot.

Just a hobo with a scent of the scavenger,
 the romanticized stink of a jackal

in Darfour, Port-au-Prince or Mexico City—

(lime skull there,
neat cough,
helix, calcium

but neither tundra nor cobblestone.)

Not sharecropper or fireworks or pillar—
             just a callous brunette

Flotsam.  Labyrinth.  
Unkempt ambition.

Ashes for a shallow urn.

A little too dangerous,
a little thistle.

All longitude.  All moonshine.  
Damasked vulva.  But neither
smoke nor spinet, bluestem nor
stammer in the white mayhem.


Copyright © 2008 by Lynne Thompson

“In America’s Mirror” first appeared in Margie.  Thompson’s full-length collection Beg No Pardon  is available on Amazon.com and from Perugia Press.

Lynne Thompson  won the 2007 Perugia Press Book Prize for her first full-length collection of poems, Beg No Pardon which was also awarded the 2008 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award.  A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a frequent reader, both locally and nationally, Thompson also authored two poetry chapbooks:  We Arrive By Accumulation and Through A Window and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies including Rattle, Sou’Wester, Indiana Review, and Ploughshares.  She is Director of Employee & Labor Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles.