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A Pair of Scissors: Poems
Whether riffing on rush-hour traffic, on walking the dog, or on watching TV, Sharon Thesen's incantatory poems capture elusive, overlooked moments, and together form an incisive and witty portrait collage of our daily lives.
In spinning acts of violence into fairytales, mundane anxieties into catchy advertising jingles, and pedestrian scenes into surrealistic filmscapes, these poems reveal to us a pair of scissors—a double-edged sword where workaday events hold transcendent magic, and artful fantasies are born of inescapable banality. Sharon Thesen's new collection brims with honesty, toughness, humor, and genius.
In spinning acts of violence into fairytales, mundane anxieties into catchy advertising jingles, and pedestrian scenes into surrealistic filmscapes, these poems reveal to us a pair of scissors—a double-edged sword where workaday events hold transcendent magic, and artful fantasies are born of inescapable banality. Sharon Thesen's new collection brims with honesty, toughness, humor, and genius.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2000
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January 24, 2022
Green steepnesses, white lime green, mossy
jade thinking of Wordsworth and Meng Chiao
a thousand years apart
*
Branches extend a helping hand, do-si-do
through a crumbling spot
*
Clambering around, found
a deer's boudoir
*
Up Red Mountain Road, in heat,
trudging the way people have
always trudged
*
What can you say
about the lake behind you? Best not to
mention it at all
*
Down at Silverton spoke
in a glass phone booth
*
Someone drove by with a
red canoe on the roof rack
*
Found a small stone
with the face of a cow on it,
three-quarter profile
*
Nick heaves blue water pipe up over
a shoulder, a Roman fountain god
or wood sprite with leaves in his hair
*
Incessant creek water, leaves you
not knowing how to spell
*
Like old Russia, village full of psychics,
gardeners, observers
of own digestions
*
Bacteria cook up compost
*
Mulch, and white dishpans, clear water
*
Wild orchids attend my sleep, bears pass by
while I dream of city fires
*
Letters to far friends
telling them the same way
the same things
*
Pick up paint samples
for the screen door, we take turns
holding them up after supper
*
Then drag a fat bluey green
stone up the driveway, near dark,
widening moon travels upward, heavy stone
big mother turtle.
* * *
Thank you
(I mean it)
for the flute music
and the announcement -
tomorrow's weather:
a few flurries.
The wandering tempo
seems delirious
for the cooler climate
of my heart
these days, having learned
a thing or two
lately,
thank you very much.
* * *
To be bold in my own way,
to pour myself into something
I can stand & would stand all day
as long as the uniform were some
Yohji Yamamoto thing didn't cost too much
and the city gave me something back.
* * *
After considering the death by suicide
of the young man deranged by war the ambulance
made such a noise about
After the departure of the last guests
Mrs. Dalloway removes her green dress,
her shoes, her underthings, her jewellery
The lines scored by the penknife of regret
on the removed eroticism of her body
Despite the three-times daily ingestion
of Ambrotose Plus Vegetable and Herbal Extract -
"Manna from Heaven."
* * *
A sigh like a sign
overcomes the desk chair's
swivel, alike itself to:
curiosity of an adder,
shock of periscope, eek! a shark,
my essay on swine or "Lullaby
of Birdland" as a contingency plan
for New Year's Eve. For the record
it worked out fine, I could see
360 degrees all around like a repetitious
possessed person, green in the face.
Unpleasant.
* * *
Spirits of the living
going down the sidewalk past the Railway Club
with something in mind, Mason Pearson hairbrush or
that Jean Cocteau movie
where everything takes place in a corridor
filled with mirrors, skeleton keys,
and ostentation of entrance
past the old coughing men at the door
of the hostel and city crews digging up the road
flanked by ribbons and signs
the grid of ourselves ordered around
by purchases, their proof.
* * *
I used to say
you look like an emperor
a playing-card king,
deep-black bearded
big dark eyes
made smaller by glasses
you were kind of blind kind of
helpless without them, thick
you groped for them first thing
shoved them on
whole-handed. Bad eyes,
bad hearing, bad luck -
don't remember if your knees
were bad, or relatively good
for a very tall person made even taller
by your two-foot-high ruby-encrusted crown.
jade thinking of Wordsworth and Meng Chiao
a thousand years apart
*
Branches extend a helping hand, do-si-do
through a crumbling spot
*
Clambering around, found
a deer's boudoir
*
Up Red Mountain Road, in heat,
trudging the way people have
always trudged
*
What can you say
about the lake behind you? Best not to
mention it at all
*
Down at Silverton spoke
in a glass phone booth
*
Someone drove by with a
red canoe on the roof rack
*
Found a small stone
with the face of a cow on it,
three-quarter profile
*
Nick heaves blue water pipe up over
a shoulder, a Roman fountain god
or wood sprite with leaves in his hair
*
Incessant creek water, leaves you
not knowing how to spell
*
Like old Russia, village full of psychics,
gardeners, observers
of own digestions
*
Bacteria cook up compost
*
Mulch, and white dishpans, clear water
*
Wild orchids attend my sleep, bears pass by
while I dream of city fires
*
Letters to far friends
telling them the same way
the same things
*
Pick up paint samples
for the screen door, we take turns
holding them up after supper
*
Then drag a fat bluey green
stone up the driveway, near dark,
widening moon travels upward, heavy stone
big mother turtle.
- Victoria Day Weekend, Silverton, pg. 10-12
* * *
Thank you
(I mean it)
for the flute music
and the announcement -
tomorrow's weather:
a few flurries.
The wandering tempo
seems delirious
for the cooler climate
of my heart
these days, having learned
a thing or two
lately,
thank you very much.
- Thank You, pg. 26
* * *
To be bold in my own way,
to pour myself into something
I can stand & would stand all day
as long as the uniform were some
Yohji Yamamoto thing didn't cost too much
and the city gave me something back.
- A Pair of Scissors, 1, pg. 29
* * *
After considering the death by suicide
of the young man deranged by war the ambulance
made such a noise about
After the departure of the last guests
Mrs. Dalloway removes her green dress,
her shoes, her underthings, her jewellery
The lines scored by the penknife of regret
on the removed eroticism of her body
Despite the three-times daily ingestion
of Ambrotose Plus Vegetable and Herbal Extract -
"Manna from Heaven."
- A Pair of Scissors, 17, pg. 45
* * *
A sigh like a sign
overcomes the desk chair's
swivel, alike itself to:
curiosity of an adder,
shock of periscope, eek! a shark,
my essay on swine or "Lullaby
of Birdland" as a contingency plan
for New Year's Eve. For the record
it worked out fine, I could see
360 degrees all around like a repetitious
possessed person, green in the face.
Unpleasant.
- A Sigh Like a Sign, pg. 53
* * *
Spirits of the living
going down the sidewalk past the Railway Club
with something in mind, Mason Pearson hairbrush or
that Jean Cocteau movie
where everything takes place in a corridor
filled with mirrors, skeleton keys,
and ostentation of entrance
past the old coughing men at the door
of the hostel and city crews digging up the road
flanked by ribbons and signs
the grid of ourselves ordered around
by purchases, their proof.
- Blood of a Poet, pg. 62
* * *
I used to say
you look like an emperor
a playing-card king,
deep-black bearded
big dark eyes
made smaller by glasses
you were kind of blind kind of
helpless without them, thick
you groped for them first thing
shoved them on
whole-handed. Bad eyes,
bad hearing, bad luck -
don't remember if your knees
were bad, or relatively good
for a very tall person made even taller
by your two-foot-high ruby-encrusted crown.
- The King, pg. 71
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