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