Larry Thacker

What’s on my mind?   

The problem is, you sit in class,

or a boardroom in a high rise office building,

or within some congregation,

say, at a recital or a baptism,

but can’t just sit there.

You observe yourself, as you’ve been taught,

from outside yourself. A witness

to your breathing, visualizing it:

understanding, but not quite understanding,

that most of what you’ve pulled into your lungs

your whole life, isn’t oxygen at all.

And that you’re a fool for thinking

so flippantly for so long

about an exchange so potentially deadly.

That this meticulous mixture

is a wondrous thing hardly considered

moment, to moment, to moment.

And how something very scary, full

of cosmic witchcraft propels your heart muscle

to twitching like a restless fist-sized alien

in a ribbed calcium cage, a body zoo

you transport everywhere you go.

And they wonder why you can’t concentrate.

Larry D. Thacker is a Kentuckian writer, artist, and educator hailing from Johnson City, Tennessee. He lives with his wife, Karin, and their cat, Abraham Lincoln. Larry D. Thacker’s poetry is in over 150 publications including Spillway, Still: The Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Poetry South, The Southern Poetry Anthology, The American Journal of Poetry, The Lake, Illuminations Literary Magazine, and Appalachian Heritage. His books include three full poetry collections, Drifting in Awe, Grave Robber Confessional, and Feasts of Evasion, two chapbooks, Voice Hunting and Memory Train, as well as the folk history, Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia. His MFA in poetry and fiction is earned from West Virginia Wesleyan College. Visit his website at: www.larrydthacker.com