• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

Maureen Thorson: The Pirate Cure

May 13, 2011 by PBQ

Maybe you’d never have heard of our particular plights—
Spino-fibularia, rosecutter’s ill – strange maladies
That guarded themselves harmlessly within our hearts
Until some irritant arose or some passion bottled up,
Unexercised. Too frail to lift even a page, we layered
Recliners and sofas with the thin coverlets of our bodies.
But, sick though we were, we refused to be the only ones
For whom the happiness formulas failed. We took to sea:
Bodies that once withered on their stalks now hardened,
Minds dulled by papered walls were sharpened on salt,
Took on a maritime gleam, built up their strength with blood
And conquest. Rocked by water, our fortunes telescoped
Along estuaries and harbors, and if sometimes you’d hear
A scream – it wasn’t ours. There was nothing wrong with us now.

Filed Under: Contributors 74, Issue 74, Poetry, Poetry 74 Tagged With: Contributors 74, Maureen Thorson, Poetry, Poetry 74

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ March Slam Session!

PBQ @ the Pen & Pencil!

PBQ Slam Session!

Slam Session with PBQ!

PBQ @ Poetry Tent!

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org