Thomas Dooley is the author of Trespass, a winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by poet and novelist Charlie Smith. His poetry has been published by The Academy of American Poets, Poetry Daily, The Cortland Review, Palimpsest: Yale Literary and Arts Magazine, and twice-featured on “PBS NewsHour.” He has garnered fellowships from New York University, The Jentel Foundation, and The Starlight Foundation, and is the creator of SURGE, a literary magazine that exclusively publishes art and poetry by hospitalized teenagers. Thomas is the Founding Artistic Director of Emotive Fruition, a New York-based reading series of actors and poets whose commissioned work was recently featured on NPR's hit show Radiolab. A member of the creative writing faculty at New York University, Thomas lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. ---------
Theology of the Body
1.
You found me
in a garden
making small
improvements to
creeping thyme.
No one believed
I could pleach
such a feathery thing.
You ran your fingers
down the slatted pergola
just like they do
in Genesis. Let’s
have a sandwich,
I said. But you
were feasting
on stone fruit.
You told me
your fears when
the sprinklers
set off. Not
of water per se,
but how
it jumps out,
sudden as a snake.
I said I would
walk first
through the foxtrot.
Later
we were naked.
You named the scar,
a small sickle
above my heart,
The Fertile Crescent.
We made a lattice
of our fingers, twined
our legs
in a young cosmos, unafraid
and becoming.
2.
We walked down to where
ocean and sky
two-toned. You
looked up
into the paler blue
and named it
The Vault. In the outdoor
shower we rinsed sand
from our swim trunks
printed with wildebeests.
At church we sang under a fresco
of metallic stars as
congregants tried
to tolerate our fitted chinos
and vibrato. Sunday:
Kiss of Peace
to your lips.
Sunday: your stone fruit
galette. Connubial peach
and plum. Love,
I’m building
a tent on the beach
like the lost tribes did. Let’s rest
within its quiver. Vault
of canvas to have
and hold us.
3.
For a while they kept imagining a life
together, but became birds leaving
in two directions—
one south-gliding,
one late in winter
hurtling towards leafless arms.
Darling,
Get some ice Turn the ceiling fan on Terrible
heat outside The rainy season Shake my slippers
of scorpions The ashtray needs
to be scraped Finish the crossword The duvet cover
should be stripped Call Mona The aspic is John’s
favorite I think it’s ENSNARE at 67 down The cufflinks
by the sink Don’t forget the top lock The evening
paper drop off The wine can breathe I’ll
be back to get the laundered No wait
it’s ENSNARL Come to think of it
Ballad of a Seeker
His father painted interiors in eggshells and satins,
studded upholstery with tacks, stretched
hide the sheen of apple skins over new batting.
They never talked about mother. The son would dream
of Asia, would string cardamom pods along a valance
and drifted at the kitchen table. He would imagine
quick ferries, a market with morning light on fish skins
and shells. He’d run lost among the canvas sails, only to glimpse
a ship, could almost see his mother running
away to the water and the water running
to a lost shore, its rocky jowls, a narrow passage, a sliver
through which a few white gulls dive.