Watch Texas Poet Laureate Larry D. Thomas read at FPL
Tide
Pool Touch Tank
for Frank
The
dank air
of
the Maine State Aquarium
is
pungent with brine
and
the nostril-flaring
smell
of fresh fish.
Little
children huddle
around
a tank
like
primitives in a ritual.
Their
heads swim
with
flashbacks
of
moonless, blue-black skies,
of
luminous bodies
sparkling
through the slats
of
their cribs
beside
the windows,
ever
beyond the reach
of
their fat, groping fingers.
Wide-eyed,
entranced
by
the miracle beneath them,
they
take deep breaths,
ease
their hands into the black-
green
holiness of seawater,
and,
with the fingers of gods
trembling
in the heavens,
stroke
the spiny skin of stars.
(from
The
Lobsterman’s Dream
currently in press at El Grito del Lobo Press, Fulton, MO; first published in The Texas
Review)
Rattlesnake
Roundup
At
sunrise bands of gunless hunters
Stud
the bleak, West Texas landscape,
Clutching
forked sticks, wide-eyed at openings
Of
cap rock dens, shoving vees
Behind
the venom-bulged heads of vipers,
Bagging
their catch in coarse tow sacks
For
the trip to the town coliseum,
To
pits teeming with fugues of fierce rattling
Where
handlers press fangs against lips of jars,
Milking
poison, and butchers section cuts
For
deep fryers, cooking sweet, snow-white meat
For
the leathery mouths of old townsfolk.
(from
Amazing Grace, winner of the 2001
Texas Review Poetry Prize)
Fox
Fire
After
weeks of light rain
the
floor of the woods
is
sodden as a bog,
a
patchwork of oxblood
and
mustard tallow leaves
disintegrating
from the thread-
like
skeletons of their veins
in
the black machinations
of
rot, scat-scented,
shining
with frog-slime, upthrust
by
the shoots of mushrooms
muscling
their way through the mire,
loosing
old fox-stink
to
slither through the mist
like
warm steam.
(from
The Woodlanders, Finalist, 2000
Pecan Grove Press National Chapbook Competition)
Larry D. Thomas, a member of
the Texas Institute of Letters and the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, has published
nineteen collections of poetry. His most
recent book-length collections are The Skin of Light (Dalton Publishing 2010) and A Murder
of Crows (Virtual Artists Collective
2011). Among the numerous prizes and
awards his poetry has received are two Texas Review Poetry Prizes (2001 and 2004), the 2004 Violet Crown
Award (Writers’ League of Texas), the 2003 Western Heritage Award (National
Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum), a Poets’ Prize nomination (West Chester
University/Nicholas Roerich Museum), five Pushcart Prize nominations, a “Best
of the Net” nomination, and six Spur Award Finalist citations (Western Writers
of America). His Larry D.
Thomas: New and Selected Poems (TCU Press
2008) was long-listed for the National Book Award.
Larry D. Thomas has also been
a featured poet at a previous FPL Poetry Series event and we hope to have him back to read later this year or during the first half of 2014.
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