People I Can't or Won't Have Another Conversation With

By Alexander Thorne

The People in the title of Alexander Thorne's new book are both living and dead, but this also refers to the fact that we all carry fragments of the living and dead within ourselves. "In the center, transcendent, are old ghosts," so begins People I Can't or Won't Have Another Conversation With. "They look at me from across the room./ They're like stars—when you look at them/they are hard to see but when they enter/your peripheral vision—there they are."

Thorne's poems explore the bridges between the physical world where we live and the collective unconscious where we dream (and where we keep both our dead and the collected fragments of our past), blending reality with the surreal. As Fyodor Dostoyevsky once wrote, "Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret." Poems such as these confirm David Bain's observation of Thorne's poetry that "...his work is more sharp, insightful and intriguing than anything I was writing at the same age."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Thorne
• Release date: Jul 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311857705

Alexander Thorne

Alexander Thorne was born in 1989 and spends most of his time living in western Michigan. His submitted work has appeared in the e-magazine Phoenix Lore, the short fiction and poetry collection There Are Monsters Everywhere, and in news articles from the Western Herald. His self-published poetry chapbooks are entited Another Mistaken Anima and People I Can't or Won't Have Another Conversation With.Email me at:[e-mail]

Book preview

LETTING GO OF THE WHEEL

To die, it’s easy. But you have to struggle for life.

Art Spiegelman, Maus

Yesterday at home, close to downtown Kalamazoo,

I opened a comic book and heard Art Spiegelman

speak of a new fear for the first time. He was afraid

for his daughter while she was away at school so he

and his wife brought her home. From his place in

Lower Manhattan I heard his traumatized cries.

Shortly thereafter, President Bush stopped by the

debris in Lower Manhattan. Smoke unfurled up toward

the sun. He delivered a speech about justice and

punishment. The crowd shouted their agreement to

the sermon. Lights shined upward that night. Much

later, he said, off subject, We’ve got him!

Writing is work so help me, muse. It’s almost morning.

Hey, anima! Flow strong from within or without. Give me

something to write about, so I can inspire someone. Take

and pass the gift because sharing is caring. So

everybody will gift something from the heart. If not, I’ll

drown you in complaints. Then your name will be

indistinguishable from any other names or words.

This is our home. Here, everyone likes listening,

sharing, and talking about conflict. Right now, a friend

of mine, a soldier, sits alone and feral. He has gifts to take

but none to give. I say to him, "Where are you? Sharing

and bringing home our roots and their long shadows? He

is my brother and a lost source, home, tame me— down

south, he is alone, standing ground. Where is his home?"

"Alex, I am inside and outside among dark