Percussion
Lynne Thompson
The Sensuality of Trees
Christopher Woods
Touching someone is another way
to skin a person alive.
—Jason B. Crawford
Yes, you may be surprised that I was surprised at the touching—
his summer warm flesh on mine was a moment when someone
(oblivious to my history) surely felt, in that moment, this is
someone needing contact, percussion; someone wanting another
route into living with her fate and gambles, wanting another way
to open doors, to stand in white-hot light, to mock the blues, and to
feel, to feel as though, to feel as though she is first, Queen; her skin
scent of Earth’s multiple mysteries: gardenia, magnolia, wild papaya;
her color dark or chant or you think you want this history, this person
who is woman, drama and no drama, left for dead, but oh—so alive!
Lynne Thompson served as Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, 2021-2022. She is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently, Blue on a Blue Palette (BOA Editions 2024). New work can be found or is forthcoming in The Common, Tifferet, the Georgia Review and the anthologies Winter in America.(Still and 52 Writing Prompts, Inspiration for the Creative Writer. Thompson sits on the Boards of the Poetry Foundation, Los Angeles Review of Books, and is the current President of Cave Canem. Find Lynne on Instagram and Threads.
Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. He has published a novel, The Dream Patch, a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, and a poetry collection, Maybe Birds Would Carry It Away. His novella, Hearts in the Dark, was published in an anthology by Running Wild Press in Los Angeles. He has received residencies from The Ucross Foundation and the Edward Albee Foundation, and a grant from the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation. His plays included Moonbirds, an absurdist play about census-takers in a country where there are no people left to count, Fire, a drama about a woman who loses her family in a house fire she may have set, Interim, about souls in Purgatory, and Heart Speak, an evening of monologues for men and women. Find his photography here or follow him on Instagram.