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The Good Bacteria: Poems
Musical, personable, equally alive to joy and despair, Thesen's poetry evokes the spirituality that lies at the periphery of things. Whether a glimpse of neighbor’s yellow dress, a tube of polysporin, or a tin awning that is momentarily mistaken for a lake, Thesen knows that the spiritual can disguise itself in a number of forms. Crisp, intimate, and uncluttered, these poems include themes of the self versus the whole and time's insistence on redesigning everything we understand as familiar.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published August 8, 2006
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January 21, 2022
They had a view of the twinkling city as they ate.
Car lights were a ribbon along the shape of the bridge.
No one was there; they were all ghosts in coats.
No more bloody ghazals! one ghost shouted to another.
In the morning they ate again, and took their penicillin pills.
The penicillin killed the good bacteria as well as the bad.
It killed all the bacteria, good and bad, like death or God.
Though death, being a matter of bacteria, is also life.
It was easier to walk to Kamloops.
He lugged his own laptop; it was easier that way.
On his lap sat the known universe.
When he sat down, the known universe sat on his lap.
He could see anything that way on the way to Kamloops.
A known ghost. The trees burned all the way to the sky.
His stomach burned when he took the penicillin.
* * *
He could have been a soldier
in the last years of the war
or come of age around the time I was born.
Maybe this has to do with the weirdness
and warp of time, the spiraling, going nowhere.
One is neither here nor there
and doesn't know what to say.
One sits in the perished chair and listens.
Like a bending of the rain the thought of William Penn,
said to have been fair and wise
which is why the Indians trusted him.
Attractive, idealistic, clear-eyed -
this charisma led them all to a holy experiment.
Science magazines in stacks
on the kitchen table, radio antennas
at several different angles conspire in the ether.
* * *
I noticed everything -
its transient finding a dime,
its gorgeous detail.
Yet feel remiss
in the quality of my general
attention. The trifling,
the nonsensical
had a short day, relatively
speaking, relative to history.
Someone should write an important poem.
* * *
Mars glared
in the firmament
among the shooting stars
the orange moons
morning cloaked
in terracotta
smoke, yellow pears
pendant in orchards
a fallen, roasted
aspen leaf
Etruscan artefact
among the tongs
and tines of suppertimes
* * *
Willow tree in winter,
skiff of snow on a wooden bench
placed thoughtful beneath
her boughs -
she'd had wind chairs
specially upholstered -
conversations' nexus -
two of them, the two of us,
our two cigarettes and another
voice going round on the record player
or emanating from a book
swish of traffic outside, her frequent
use of the word absolutely
Car lights were a ribbon along the shape of the bridge.
No one was there; they were all ghosts in coats.
No more bloody ghazals! one ghost shouted to another.
In the morning they ate again, and took their penicillin pills.
The penicillin killed the good bacteria as well as the bad.
It killed all the bacteria, good and bad, like death or God.
Though death, being a matter of bacteria, is also life.
It was easier to walk to Kamloops.
He lugged his own laptop; it was easier that way.
On his lap sat the known universe.
When he sat down, the known universe sat on his lap.
He could see anything that way on the way to Kamloops.
A known ghost. The trees burned all the way to the sky.
His stomach burned when he took the penicillin.
- The Good Bacteria, 1, pg. 11
* * *
He could have been a soldier
in the last years of the war
or come of age around the time I was born.
Maybe this has to do with the weirdness
and warp of time, the spiraling, going nowhere.
One is neither here nor there
and doesn't know what to say.
One sits in the perished chair and listens.
Like a bending of the rain the thought of William Penn,
said to have been fair and wise
which is why the Indians trusted him.
Attractive, idealistic, clear-eyed -
this charisma led them all to a holy experiment.
Science magazines in stacks
on the kitchen table, radio antennas
at several different angles conspire in the ether.
- A Holy Experiment, 3, pg. 27
* * *
I noticed everything -
its transient finding a dime,
its gorgeous detail.
Yet feel remiss
in the quality of my general
attention. The trifling,
the nonsensical
had a short day, relatively
speaking, relative to history.
Someone should write an important poem.
- Prologue, pg. 59
* * *
Mars glared
in the firmament
among the shooting stars
the orange moons
morning cloaked
in terracotta
smoke, yellow pears
pendant in orchards
a fallen, roasted
aspen leaf
Etruscan artefact
among the tongs
and tines of suppertimes
- pg. 71
* * *
Willow tree in winter,
skiff of snow on a wooden bench
placed thoughtful beneath
her boughs -
she'd had wind chairs
specially upholstered -
conversations' nexus -
two of them, the two of us,
our two cigarettes and another
voice going round on the record player
or emanating from a book
swish of traffic outside, her frequent
use of the word absolutely
- Weeping Willow, 1, pg. 87
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