From Reaching Beyond the Saguaros: “Layton, Utah”

Posted on August 24, 2017September 23, 2017 by gingerleethomason

Layton, Utah

____

Being from Northern Utah: On a quick drive westward from Utah’s capitol, through beige desert ranges, we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats on the way to a little gambling town. (Possibly for my last time in a long time.) When the wind picked up, we could taste a desert sea blowing through the peaks, and almost see where the earth curves amongst rippling refractions off asphalt and salt. Images to imprint.

The Wasatch, Uintah, and Oquirrh surrounding Home have just been my whole life. Always to the east. Their millions of years of memory seen through my infinitesimal birthdays.

“You’ll miss the mountains,” my sister said. “Their absence is an ache.”

Summer weekends up the Ogden, Farmington, Little, and Big Cottonwood Canyons to find the evergreen amongst golden brush turned into tinderboxes. To visit an old saloon, where they put brats on top of hamburgers and see where people have stapled signed dollar bills to the walls and ceiling. And there are initials everywhere of lovers, families, and friends. You can find my graffiti at the Shooting Star in the ladies room.

I’ll miss memories the most.

©Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com, 2015-2017. “Layton, Utah” was first published in “Reaching Beyond the Saguaros” Serving House Books, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Header image was taken with a Samsung phone by Tami Forbes in May 2017. Image 2 were taken with an iPhone 6 at the Bonneville Salt Flats in September 2016.

Poetry, Published Piece

The Pearl Farm

Posted on June 23, 2016February 5, 2021 by gingerleethomason

“The Pearl Farm” was published in Issue 7 of the Yellow Chair Review.

“The Pearl Farm” won first place in The Wilde Ones’s #GoWilde LGBT History Month “Around the World” competition

©Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com, 2015-2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Image taken with iPhone 5 at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, NJ in August 2015 by Ginger Lee Thomason

Poetry, Published Piece

Ode to Margarine

Posted on April 25, 2016February 5, 2021 by gingerleethomason

I have something to say—
And it’s only a little thing

But in the face of French cuisine,
corn on the cob, and toffee

And for ghee and for toast
I say: fuck you, margarine.

Why are you 99¢ a pound
while butter is $5?

Published in the March 2015 issue of Icarus Down Review. Republished in Heat the Grease, We’re Frying up Some Poetry, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, 2019.

©Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com, 2015-2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Image taken with iPhone 5 in London, UK in January 2014 by Ginger Lee Thomason

Residence from Jupiter

Image• Posted on February 10, 2016February 27, 2018 by gingerleethomason

Poetry

New Orleans After Work

Posted on February 10, 2016November 12, 2017 by gingerleethomason

The piano plays and drinks
With a trumpet horn broken heart and bad liver

And after many staggered shots of Bushmills
A scarred and barley-malted voice croons

In the tobacco-air and sex-hazed jazz club floor
Scarlet lips press to scruff cheek

When Matilda waltzed four sheets to the wind
In an invitation to the blues

Now step right up for a buck and small change
As the jitterbug boy watched the one that got away

*This is a found poem inspired by the song titles from Tom Waits’s 1976 album Small Change.

©Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com, 2015-2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Image taken with iPhone 5 in London, UK in January 2014 by Ginger Lee Thomason

Alive from London

Image• Posted on February 10, 2016October 21, 2016 by gingerleethomason

Poetry, Prose

Derek’s Confession

Posted on January 29, 2016April 18, 2017 by gingerleethomason

It’s a secret code, a club within a club. To reveal yourself, you casually ask, “How do you cheat?” Cheeseburgers? Tuna roll? Bacon?

Me? There’s nothing better than oysters on the half-shell. Okay, more than “a couple,” a round dozen, a squeeze of lemon and a squirt of spicy, garlicky Sriracha on each. Hemingway preferred white wine with these slippery beauties. I inhale them alongside a Manhattan; Knob Creek Rye with a splash of cherry juice completes this not-so-guilty pleasure. I’m a bad vegetarian.

Oh, come on; don’t look at me like that. There’s more than just me out there.

*Author’s Note: This is a 100 word story. This piece was inspired by their prompt as well as a friend’s, um, so-called confession. So, I’ve categorized it under both poetry and prose, because while it is prose, it could be interpreted as a prose poem too.

©Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com, 2015-2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ginger Lee Thomason and gingerleethomason.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Image taken with iPhone 5 at Chelsea Market in New York City in August 2015 by Ginger Lee Thomason

Poetry

A Perfect Apple

Posted on January 29, 2016October 21, 2016 by gingerleethomason

I’ve just eaten an apple,
and as of late
It’s been hard to find
A Malus domestica that rates a nine.

The one I’ve just eaten was
perhaps a seven.

I dare not to hope for ten,
for the fruit that warrants
such a declaration of perfection
has only been seen few times
in human memory:

Eve’s Forbidden Fruit
The Golden Apple, casus belli of the Trojan War
Snow White’s Third Gift from the Queen

Poetry

Surpris!

Posted on January 29, 2016September 2, 2020 by gingerleethomason

The golden cat, in a verdant leaf tropical storm,
Watches the girl take a picture of him

I watch the tiger, and the child
Holding the digital SLR camera

Here in Room 45, filled with dozens of voices
(Different languages, cultures, ages, and times)

We all survey these pieces, living paint
On stretched canvas, controlled by wood

Rousseau’s lightning strike illuminates the room,
Her eyes, the lens, reflecting immortal brushstrokes

For you, I recreate this moment,
Recapturing this vision at the National Gallery

Gazing upon this painting for the second time
And in vicarious wonderment anew

Photo source: http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2006/rousseau/surprised.shtm#