Consanguinity 

Family alters   hook of fire   hair turn   spilling mountains
their connection alters   meanders   like memory   downward

Family alters clues outsiders overlook
  then          family alters Mother Night with questions

alters Her with their cigarette pauses for breath
When Mother altered it was because what a good boy was I

Father altered when he wore cables of half-consciousness
The siblings never altered like winners escaping the hit

Before the family alters again we’ll be down on all fours so that
afterward we will be two quarts of black water brought to a boil:

ξ

Despite the Bruise 

it isn’t inappropriate
that I tambourine like
a frontier-woman singing

when you are churlish —
yes I am bruise when I wriggle
back into my camisole (after)

but because I am teak
to your stank cymbal

I give you this silence
remain un-reduced

which is why it isn’t
inappropriate to say
I am more than pentimento

more salty than caved
in    more jungle than
walk behind or to be denied —

ξ

In 2021, Lynne Thompson was appointed Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles. She is the author of Start With a Small Guitar, Beg No Pardon, and in 2019, Jane Hirshfield selected her manuscript, Fretwork, for the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize. Thompson’s recent work appears or is forthcoming in New England Review, Passages North, Black Warrior Review, and Best American Poetry 2020, among others. Thompson serves on the Boards of Cave Canem and the Los Angeles Review of Books.