from Abecedarium



Argonauts

From a distance, the sea looks painted,
the islands smudged, but
closer on, flying fish
lift out of waves, the sailcloth
takes its taut stance, and our Argonauts
play snooker on the deck, smirk
at Jason practicing his hero walk
up and down the bow.
If someone here
could play the panflute,
then they all would sing
a spontaneous and dirty ditty
about a girl
with big bazooms
that one of them left behind in Iolcus,
a small kingdom but not lacking
in the things that really matter, those things that,
because tonight there is no panflute,
but only Jason's pacing,
will have to stay unsung.



Eglantine

When someone most certainly French
once called you by a diminutive, something
with an -ette or an -ine tacked on at the end,

you didn't feel smaller at all. Instead
you put on a show with lots of red hips, you
swaggered up and down, blew kisses

to the streetlights, you turned them green,
green with a lust rarely seen in these days
of sterile commerce. You remembered

What's meant by flowers, those dishy little flirts—
so explosive in their je ne sais quois,
fertile ends gathered to every saucy means.



Iditarod

White snow, pink tongues:
We've got lives to save, baby.

And our noses are cold, but
We'll warm up soon,

travel miles before dawn,
before dark, and then again,

Greasing the frames of daylight
that make our pack mentality:

Ice that catches your eyelashes,
A growl in the back of the throat.



Optimus Prime

After a fierce battle with Megatron,
we all die, we will die.

We'll join the stellar scraps,
the rusty floating junket

spiraling the metallic cosmos.
Until then, commandos, keep

that iron chinstrap up,
and remember to be impressed

with all the children
who cry us back

from cartoon sweeps week
and our ratings-grabbing deaths,

and toward the hero's existence,
the ring that never ends.



Ulster

I think of it with cobblestones,
I think of it with thatch.

People there now likely
Wear sneakers and kill

Each other and eat tacos
But I can only outfit them

In cloth caps and peat-loaded
Haycarts. I am sorry, Ulster.

I am sorry, all of Ireland.
You remain for me less

Than a memory, only some
dim descriptors—

Sienna-brown, chock-full
Of gypsies and potatoes,

And vanishing now, like the buffalo
Upon the prairies, with their patient eyes,

Their stark and lovely scene.

Maureen Thorson
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