Maya C Thompson

Louisville Supremum (with Glass)

Please, ignore her when she rambles about the KKK
who shoved their Cadillac toward the brush
and kick-turned their tires as if they were one
skateboarder in a group of free wheelers
near the South African chicken joint I thought was Peruvian.
At the canceled bus stop where the man claimed
cemetery tile memorial, the second lieutenant dripped
the methanol juice as he clutched his flowers

on the bench. The chain residuum is hung in smolder.
What do you want? I gave you the footage
tapes of the copper backward swan at the intersection,
its neck turned to the woman on the curb.
Train a highway to be empty long enough,
you can summon a convention to shout where they died
the first time. How they laughed at the oxygen
on the surgery tables after they handed the tourniquets themselves,

flooded hotel pools with chlorine, and taught you to crave
car crashes so far from home you’d never go back.
Who else could slugger bat these preachers into crystal?
A thug witness who just so happened to be on the sidewalk?
When I pass a wreck, I think of her grills glistening
over Appalachia. I got miles on you.
Mince the bullet in her cheek and leave it there.
Divide the maxilla from the ledger,

a two-way echinacea raised under the lead bud.

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Maya C Thompson is a poet from Maryland. Her work is forthcoming in The Tusculum Review and appears in The Scarab. She enjoys playing instruments and watching films.