Gale Marie Thompson

Poems

Recent Publications

“The Divide.” Poetry Society of America, May 2022 (Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award).
“Wind Shear.” South Carolina Review Volume 54.2, Spring 2022.
“I See the Moon (after Sheila).” Jai-Alai Magazine Final Issue, Summer 2021.
“The Responsible,” “Jocasta, As I Hope She Wore It.” Birdcoat Quarterly, Issue 5, 2021.
“Milk Teeth,” Guernica
“Hand Me My Leather,” The Adroit Journal
“Pattern of Behavior,” The Adroit Journal
“Palinode,” BOAAT (link broken)
“Void Poses,” Cotton Xenomorph
“Dummy Prayer,” Tin House Online
“Not to Belittle What Happened, But—” The Shallow Ends
“The Definition,” Witness
“Blueprint III,” Witness
"Hunger is the Analog,” Nightjar Review
“A Rank, Bleak Devotion” (& "Five Questions" Interview), Foundry
“They Make Things Easier Here So That Other Things Get Harder,” Cosmonauts Avenue
"Compulsion/Procedure," Smoking Glue Gun

from Helen or My Hunger:

"On Silence and Throat Singing,” Ghost Proposal Letterbox
"Helen Loops" (hybrid essay), Entropy

Muse A/ Journal
[Now I am expected to sing]
[What to calibrate now]
[The way the body curls]

The Wanderer
[With lemon voices they called you hated Helen.]
[The brain shores images like a hum, a churn.]
[June. Three rings of pineapple...]

Ghost Proposal
[We double up to hunt. We can learn to love in private]
[Helen, I spoke to you when I wrote a trick about termites]

Smoking Glue Gun
[In this wreckage I am a wild service]

Bennington Review (Verse Daily Reprint)
[In this small tent men pound] 

TIMBER
[I do remember language, Helen]
[Who am I to be solid by]

Gulf Coast
[I wait to come to good. I wait carved]

interrupture
[I don't know what refrain of near-disaster to be committed to]
[From here the swell of growing female, allure]

NightBlock
[I wake to the quiet points of my instrument]
[inscription is an act of both remembering and forgetting]
[we find rupture in those first sentences]

The Volta (They Will Sew the Blue Sail)
[from here a skein, a solution:]

TYPO
[First the sea attuned to some stable thing]
[Doubly dark now in the marginalia]

MiPOesias 
[Think of this, Helen, as the echoes]
[and how to get at the excess]
[I’m thinking of nonsense now, Helen]
[I am preoccupied, Helen]

B O D Y
[How did she hold a nectarine? Who stood]

Dusie
[Am I a load-bearing performance,]
[This isn’t a poem.]
[That pulling my tights up is a sign. That leaning over]
[I say I’m working on a poem thinking about]

elsewhere
[Every word tastes of its context]
[Standing with other women I remember]
[Being itinerant is easy, he says, the Poet says]
[There are 85 different kinds of pain, my physical therapist]
[Can I mouth this myth again and again?]

Powder Keg Magazine
[Touch in me a hammer, Helen]
[I have nothing to give and it tastes sour]

 "The March Between." interrupture, Feb 2018.

 From Grief Vectors

Hot Metal Bridge
Souvenir

"Observatories," Cloud Rodeo, Spring 2016
"Elegy with Photostat," FLAG+VOID, Spring 2015
"Elegy with a Hangover and X-Files," Everyday Genius, August 2014
"Confection," Big Lucks, August 2014
"Cal, Have You Ever Gone Through Caves? (After Elizabeth Bishop)," Banango Street, Spring 2014. (Interview about it here.)
“Poem after H.D. and Eidolon,” “Emanations,” B O D Y, April 2014
“Lemon Evening Warning,” “The Doldrums,” Sixth Finch, Spring 2014
"Dupuytren's Contracture," "Glass Eye Poem," Souvenir, Summer 2014  
"Solar Divide," "Savannah," Pinwheel, Fall 2013
"Expeditions to the Polar Seas," Guernica, Fall 2013
"The Milky Way is a Snowy White," Ampersand Review, Spring 2014
“Something Like a Stevie Nicks Documentary,” “Points of Contact,” Sink Review, Fall 2013
“Somewhere,” “Wishes to Will,” iO: Poetry, Fall 2013
“Yes, But More Animals,” “Poem to John Denver,” “Duplex,” Coconut, Spring 2013
“Pulsar” + video, Better: Culture and Lit, Spring 2013
"Earth in Space,” “Mapping the World,” Octopus, Spring 2013
“No Heart,” “Explorer in the Classic Mold,” Banango Street, Fall 2013
“God Bless Svalbard,” Sixth Finch, Fall 2011
“Found Footage,” “Deep Blue Sea,” ILK, Fall 2012
“Crow’s Nest,” "from Observatories,” diode, Fall 2012
“Ojala,” “Not Keeping Now,” Birdfeast, Fall 2012
“Sleight of Hand,” “Eye & Screen,” Bakery, Elegy Feature, Fall 2013 
“If Alkaline, If Extinction,” “Summons : Soldiery,” inter|rupture, Summer 2012
“Forest/City Poem,” “Cave/City Poem,” “Ocean/City Poem,” inDigest, Fall 2013
“One of Nature’s Masterpieces,” H_NGM_N #13, Spring 2012
“Yellow Frosted Cake,” “Come to the Kitchen, Kelsey,” Glitterpony, Spring 2010
“Questions of Comets 1,” “Earth Movements,” H_NGM_N #11, Spring 2011

Essays/Essaylets

“The Book of Moths.” Mississippi Review, Summer 2022. (Finalist for 2022 CNF Contest)
"Reading Ekstasis: Tracking Contradiction, Sustaining Incongruities." American Poetry Review, July/Aug 2018. 

You Make Me Feel #24: Boys for Pele 20th Anniversary ("Blood Roses"), Entropy, Summer 2016
"Stevie Nicks, Serial Poems, Voyager, and the Arecibo Message", NPM Daily, April 2014
Coldfront's Song of the Week: Leather and Lace by Stevie Nicks feat. Don Henley, July 2012

Interviews

“An Interview with Gale Marie Thompson on Helen or My Hunger.” Scene4, Spring 2021.
“A Poet and Novelist Discuss the Literary Allure of Outer Space” with Zach Powers. Lit Hub, 2019.

The Saturday Rumpus Interview: "Survival is Ramshackle, as is Tolerance": An Interview with Kamden Hilliard
Where Our Memories Settle: an Interview with Gale Marie Thompson (Lindsay Tigue)
A Dialogue on the Future of Poetry with Rob MacDonald and Matt Hart
Banango Lit: Elizabeth Bishop Cover Poem, Repetition, Loss (June 2014)
LitBridge: Why Start Publishing a Literary Journal (Curtis Perdue) (August 2012)
Black Lawrence Press: Astonishment, Amazement, and Process (December 2011)

H_NGM_N: COVERED! On the If You're a Bear, I'm a Bear Cover Design

The Georgia Review: Identifying with Valentine: An Interview with Anya Silver