Ann M. Thompson is a career writer-editor who has worked in the nonprofit, corporate, U.S. government, and education sectors. She is also a Certified Medical Reiki Master and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Reiki Research. Ann’s creative writing (including poetry, vignettes and creative nonfiction) has been published in 20+ literary journals in the U.S. and abroad; her work has earned final, long-list or short-list rankings in 10 literary contests since 2014.
Pontic Genocide
1913–1923
Your left hand tugged at tallgrass
as you levered up your right
to a cleft in the crags
where a distant cross
like broken chalk
recalled 400 villagers,
herded like goats
by bayonets
beyond a ridge
beyond the range
of sound.
With no particular
animus
the conscripts
covered up the pit
and moved on
to the next.
I was pocked earth
after you left,
but the cavity
is overgrown
by now.
I mark the spot
with a simple rood
of honey and gristle,
sea halite and bone.
The Poet
To my grandmother, Eleanor.
She never read her poetry aloud,
that I recall. And yet I do; I can hear
her low voice, feline and reserved,
as if holding herself back. I recall
her sprawling breasts, the ample hips
over unlikely narrow calves, small hands
with lacquered nails that flickered
as she knit. A seamless tumulus
of afghans, sweaters, hats and toys
for children she never knew, children
she missed. I settled up against her
on the old blue couch, as the grownups
met on some neutral ground, discussing
anything but the sit-ins or the war
or Birmingham. Their voices blurred
as I leaned in close, grew hypnotized
by the clicking needles… her long past
casting slow, smoke-smelling stitches
over untold wishes, unspoken memories.
Old Plane
First published in Literary Imagination (Oxford University Press) – 10/28/14.
Its blade like
a manta’s mouth,
cast iron wings
cool and heavy
in my palms.
Fit your fingers
into its long
perfected curve,
you can hear
the hiss and judder
of the wood,
feel the Plains
of simple laboring
it holds:
Long unmarked
grasslands sifting,
how they willow
from flat to fluid
in the wind.
They swirl for miles
like all who live,
passing in
and out again
without remark.
So much pasture
begs the question
about longing,
about
what is possible:
Not a tree in sight
to build or rebuild
with.
So they made do
with abundance—
the grass
itself, and clay.
They were left
in the end
with no edges
to plane
but the cradles
they brought
and the wagons
that carried them.
Northern Light
First published in Literary Imagination (Oxford University Press) – 9/6/21.
So light may be bent by, in essence, an act of will:
The turning, fierce decision to go North
toward the top of night. A vow, a skill,
like training an unused muscle, new and sore
but pleasing in the stretch, and in its pain
delightful for the proof that there is change.
A true explorer’s grit, whose lonely vision
is focused on discovery, not time.
It is like that; this first, lasting decision
to resurrect the heart for good, and climb
alone across an Oregon of dreams
that had to be relinquished one by one.
Then, too, there were the cities to be left:
angry, insistent, seeking recompense.
Once they were past, still more cold distance yet
to track, through empty years of pathless white.
What grace at last disrupts the striving ache
to bring the heart to this, where dark and days
depart and magnify, so near the Pole?
This place, a subtle influence of soul
that frees while it attracts…
Refracting light,
it transforms night
and shines the hues of hope across the sky.
Burning Fallow Fields
First published in Literary Imagination (Oxford University Press) – 9/23/21.
It comes back at the moment of inhaling:
that sweetly acrid smell of meadows burning.
Unseen, the hand that bound the oily rags
securely to a pole and struck a match,
a timeless acolyte. Working alone
in fading dark, he passed from row to row
across uneven tracks, the shallow scars
that harvest leaves on earth. It seems so far
ago, last fall, before a winter’s sorrow.
Still, he persists in lighting fallow furrows.
Dry tussocks twist, then pirouette and catch.
Uncoiling smoke snakes out across the thatch.
You notice, brake, and open up the vent
to take in seeing as you take in scent:
The blackened lines. Another morning grows
progressively more light. At once you know
that this is how your life, new life, must start:
that this is how spring reckons with the heart.
The Galway Review 