By Ian Thompson
The drunken man on Olive
wears a shirt that reads I need a chica
from Costa Rica! below the outline
of a nation poverty-stricken
but known by outsiders for its tranquil
beaches—just as my city is more associated
with a haunted cruise liner
than the ghosts of those killed
on its streets, or people like
this drunken man on Olive.
He’s singing Smokey Robinson’s
“The Love I Saw in You Was
By Ian Thompson
Strung above your mother’s slatetiled
patio, gleaming orbs
wobble with the breath of night—
like pendula. I’m counting
soggy Dorito morsels
that soar as you speak, a few
finding their way to the feet
of this deck chair, upon which
I sit in a defensive
lotus pose.
You want to make
a film, you tell me (about,
like, this lonely ass virgin
who meets a hot girl online,
but she lives in another
galaxy and shit, so he
hijacks a NASA spaceship
to go get laid), and I feign
the woozy grin that adorns
my face in all our old pictures,
and I force the words,
You’re a genius! as I had
a thousand […]
By Ian Thompson
If one had asked you why
your career in the arts
never flourished, you would
have shrugged perplexedly.
the stub on your right foot—
what remained of a toe
you’d sheared off to avoid
being drafted—a sign of
the madness that all geniuses must possess.
Today, I read about
a sculptor who achieved fame
for ingesting a lethal combination
of psychedelics and amphetamines,
then stapling his testicles
to a park bench in broad daylight,
and I couldn’t help but think
that maybe you could’ve tried harder.
Ian Thompson is currently working to receive his graduate degree in Literature at California State University Long Beach. He has published poetry in the literary journals Cadence […]
