
Notice: 6pm Yoga on the Roof Tonight
Lee Thomas
Lee Colin Thomas lives and writes in Minneapolis. His poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Salamander, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Water~Stone Review, Midwestern Gothic, Narrative, Nimrod International Journal, Pilgrimage, and elsewhere. Online at leecolinthomas.net.
Having risen beyond fluorescence, above ducts
throating the froth of metallic air, we
strange pigeons fold ourselves forward
on the tenth-floor terrace.
Heads down, fingers splayed like starfish
to July’s yeasted length, we press
closer to the sun-warmed marrow
of cement beneath our mats.
The stories stack like bricks, the city
all around, and somewhere two car alarms
choose sides. We try to accept
the swarms of electric bees
exhausting from industrial fans.
We try to hold any pain we feel
with the attention of finding
a hatchling fallen from its nest.
Can you give your pain such attention?
asks our instructor, before standing tall
to lead us through poses. Dizzy
pitch of balance undone
by height and head back,
eyes skyward to glassed
towers — everything a-sway,
and gravity: mere agreement.
We are blood and stars, heat
bending an arc toward sugar,
smaller than sugar, a sweetness let loose
inside this blue-bright swallow
