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
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