iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 4h

If you’re in Portland, ME this Saturday, I’ll be reading with Gretchen Berg and some of my favorite poets at the Munjoy Hill Neighborhood Association building ❤️

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 16h

The Poetry Commission shall allocate to each poet an annual moon allowance. 🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 16h

“My every star on real monsters shines.” A poem by Jay Hopler.

meditation on folklore: a coda

fuck bigfoot my every star
on real monsters shines
i haunt my own
damned house in a body sewn
together by doctors
witch & otherwise
snakes behind my dim eyes
writhe & rattle-clack
their death-clock
maracas at every knee creak
& neck crack
i'm supposed to get the shivers
over some backwoods booger-
man don't make me laugh

huntsman cancer hospital july 2020

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

“The snake in the moon is uncharmed.” A poem by Diane Wakoski.

#18
(FROM THE TAROT DECK)

The snake in the moon is uncharmed by everything.
He rides an endless circuit—
a cowboy, a desperado.
Python, clasping a dead world so tight it bulges
and gives light.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

“Beware those footsteps that stop in a hush.” A poem by Anne Carson.

Reticent Sonnet

A pronoun is a kind of withdrawal from naming.
Because naming is heavy, naming may be slightly shaming.
We live much more lightly than this,
we address ourselves allusively in our minds—
as “I" or "we" or “one"—part of a system
that argues with shadow, like Venetian blinds.
Speaking of Venice, called "the Shakespeare of cities" by a friend of mine,
reminds me how often the Sonnets misprint “their” for “thine”:

beware the fog in Venice.
Beware those footsteps that stop in a hush.
I used to think I would grow up to be a person whose reasoning was deep,
instead I became a kind of brush.
I brush words against words. So do we follow ourselves out of youth,
brushing, brushing, brushing wild grapes onto truth.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

“I think you exist only to tease me.” A poem by John Ashbery.

Paradoxes and Oxymorons

BY JOHN ASHBERY

This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you. You look out a window
Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don't have it.
You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.
What's a plain level? It is that and other things,
Bringing a system of them into play. Play?
Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,
As in the division of grace these long August days
Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.

It has been played once more. I think you exist only
To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren't there
Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem
Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

“Seven scratches upon the sun.” A poem by Adam O. Davis.

Spirit Arithmetic

BY ADAM O. DAVIS

One nick.
Two nick-

els. Three lic-
orice twists before

bedtime. Four hours
of a leaky faucet. Five times

five times now. Six spoons I swallow.
Seven scratches upon the sun. Eight elms

invisible to the eye. Nine knots in a blonde braid.
Ten attics in this house. In this one we store strangers.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Past week pictures…a heron at the edge of the orchard, a beautiful dahlia, our new very shy cat experimenting with visibility, untouchable pumpkins, “it is a duck.”

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“He stirs up grief among magnolia branches.” A poem by Geoffrey Brock.

THE VAIN SUMMER

after Carlo Betocchi's "D'estate"

And it grows, the vain
summer,
even for me with my
thinning hair and gray sins:

behold the sly guest,
the wind,
as he stirs up grief
among magnolia branches

and hums his immodest
tune into
the ear of every leaf—
and then is gone,

leaving the leaves
still there,
the tree still green, but breaking
the heart of the air.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

“We are great in our vacancies.” A poem by Thea Brown.

YOU WILL SEE BRILLIANT COLORS

We are located in the tract between
preservation and obsolescence; we are great
vacancies; we are great in our vacancies;
we are fantastic.

Frames of ships that can't but sink sink
and between there's fog; any number of
events associated with the sea.

This is large and also vacant.

When we move hands the hands we see mirror
ways that move the moving in that it and in it
we see hands collecting in movement collections
of seeing mirrors of moving and we move in, we do.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

“Distinctions between worlds are fine.” A poem by Karen Solie.

Ottawa-Montreal Corridor

Karen Solie

In the unpainted cabin of the woods
old snow takes refuge, sleeping on the floor
now that it's become a burden. The acres
cleared to stumps are left to their magical thinking,
or to ours; in them we see the fear
we don't want to be alone with. In the last days
of March, distinctions between worlds are fine
as those between proof and justification

and someone on the highway or the train
might feel spoken to by the young beeches
who've worn their leaves all winter, who walk beside
the high gray creeks gold-white, translucent, trembling
as though the dead, of all the means available to them,
have chosen this way to be remembered.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

“The boy could do this forever.” A poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt.

PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY

In the front yard, my father and his son
are playing ball, the round egg arcs
toward a lap of brown leather, the sound
of an axe on green wood, a bass
hitting the water. The boy
could do this forever—only one glove
between them and he has it—the fireflies
already discernible on the hillside,
the grass wet, he doesn't falter
as he skirts the waist-high crabapple
or backs across the gravelled drive.
What am I after? Not shagging flies
on the lawn with my father, and not
drying the last dish with a fresh towel.
My father is a stationary target
through increasing dark, and out from my brother's
cocked proficient arm, the ball leaps,
of its own volition, into his hand.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

“Someone is looking through me at you.” A poem by Andrei Codrescu.

Ode to Curiosity

It isn't just spying that turns me on.
It's also the spyglass for having
so much light as to have no memory
though it retains the feeling.
Truly, there is no perfect opaqueness in nature.
Someone is looking through me at you just as
through you
someone is staring at me.
Ah, to be a beautiful narcissist wrapped
like Christmas paper around
a gentle voyeur!
This is what I want, Seigneur!
And then to glide out of focus

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

“Like silent naked monks.” A poem by Laura Kaschichke.

Mushrooms

BY LAURA KASISCHKE

Like silent naked monks huddled
around an old tree stump, having
spun themselves in the night
out of thought and nothingness—

And God so pleased with their silence
He grants them teeth and tongues.

Like us.

How long have you been gone?
A child's hot tears on my bare arms.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“There is no snow in Hollywood.” A poem by Frank O’Hara.

POEM

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Getting excited for this Friday!🤩 If you’re near Yarmouth, like poems with moose, mud season, and apple trees in them, and Maine-themed music, I hope to see you at 317 Main St at 6:30!

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

“Thank you for the good intentions.” A poem by Nicanor Parra, translated by Patricia Rachal.

PONCHARTRAIN CAUSEWAY

Excuse me, I am extremely sorry
I have nothing to do with these unforgettable bridges
I admit they are long. Infinite? O.K., infinite
But I have very little to do with these beautiful sunsets.
Thank you for the sandwiches and the Cokes
Thank you for the good intentions
(And also the bad ones)
My stomach is full of joy:
Can't you hear the thundering of the guts?
As long as there is nobody to prove the contrary
I will go on calling myself myself.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

“Bed goes up, bed goes down.” A poem by Rod Smith.

Summer Poem

The artwork provides the sensuous idea of freedom.
Bed goes up, bed goes down.
Just tie me to me to you.
For clarity's sake.
For a full length feature.
For, or just, orgasmic, like they say.
I have now provided the sensuous idea of freedom.
I'm very pleased you were able to attend.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

“I dreamed it, the thick braid roped over my hands.” A poem by Diane Seuss.

Self-Portrait with Sylvia Plath's Braid

BY DIANE SEUSS

Some women make a pilgrimage to visit it
in the Indiana library charged to keep it safe.

I didn't drive to it; I dreamed it, the thick braid
roped over my hands, heavier than lead.

My own hair was long for years.
Then I became obsessed with chopping it off,

and I did, clear up to my ears. If hair is beauty
then I am no longer beautiful.

Sylvia was beautiful, wasn't she?
And like all of us, didn't she wield her beauty

like a weapon? And then she married,
and laid it down, and when she was betrayed

and took it up again it was a word-weapon,
a poem-sword. In the dream I fasten

her braid to my own hair, at my nape.
I walk outside with it, through the world

of men, swinging it behind me like a tail.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

“I'd never felt so sensual before.” A poem by Michael Waters.

Wedding Dress

BY MICHAEL WATERS

That Halloween I wore your wedding dress,
our children spooked & wouldn't speak for days.
I'd razored taut calves smooth, teased each blown tress,
then—lipsticked, mascaraed, & self-amazed—
shimmied like a starlet on the dance floor.
I'd never felt so sensual before—
Catholic schoolgirl & neighborhood whore.
In bed, dolled up, undone, we fantasized:
we clutched & fused, torn wins who’d been denied.
You were my shy groom. Love, I was your bride.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

“ I hope this poem is worth a great deal financially.” A poem by Peter Davis.

POEM ADDRESSING ECONOMISTS

The problem with this poem, from your perspective, must be its lack of financial value. I guess my problem with you, from my perspective, is how you insist on putting a financial value on everything. But you're right, I guess. In fact, despite the odds, I hope this poem is worth a great deal financially. And, if that's not possible, I want it to pay off emotionally. Perhaps you can come up with some financial incentives or deterrents that will move this poem into the commercial marketplace. Everyone, including you and me, would have a lot more respect for this poem if you could.

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Next Friday, October 2, I’ll be reading some Maine and memory-themed poems for Songs from Here. If you’re in the Yarmouth area, please come check it out. ❤️

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Maureen Thorson @maureenthorson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026