You are the green apple of my green eye
the chambers of the moon in my cratered heart
the orange tree bobbing its summer orange
over the head of my Ganesh host of goblins
swallower of sweets razer of obstacles
You are the stag on whose back I sit as we amble
over mushroom & fern & late riser daisies
the doe in my arms wren warbling in one ear
hummingbird summing up my existence
in the other crows swaddling me in a murmuration
You are the careful scissors sizing down my ego
the wild red-crowned parrot lending me his strident colors
& raucous voice in perpetuity the coca cola bottle
in the hand of my Madonna the carbonation whooshing
as she opens it the cherry-brown liquid syruping up
her fingers quenching her unutterable thirst as my Christ
moans on the cross & bleeds mallows & dahlias. You
are a splash of good news with a side of sun. You are feathered
& fronded staccato’d & patina’d poppied & fruited
& swallowed delicious
whole.
~inspired by Ernesto Muniz’s collage “Garden of Earthly Delights”
t.m. thomson’s work has been featured in several journals, most recently in Fauxmoir. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards. She has co-authored Frame and Mount the Sky (2017) and is the author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). Her full-length collection, Plunge, will be published in 2023.