Jonathan Thirkield

Jonathan Thirkield Poems

Jonathan Thirkield Biography

Jonathan Thirkield is an American poet, currently living in New York City. Thirkield was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from Wesleyan University, and was a Truman Capote Fellow at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop. Thirkfield was born and raised in New York City. He achieved critical acclaim for his debut poetry collection, The Waker's Corridor, which won the 2008 Walt Whitman Award, as selected by Linda Bierds and presented by the Academy of American Poets. His poems have been featured in several journals, including WebConjunctions, The Colorado Review, and American Letters & Commentary, among others.)

The Best Poem Of Jonathan Thirkield

Design For A Silver Box In The Shape Of A Melon, 1918

In sheet metal or silver shallows
filled with these:
hollow, floating
where some assumed votives
would be lit. Or
lanterns.

Do you see the time of day? With still
some red to
flush the waders,
scatter against a few
boats, and fire
cannons

Distantly, first. When we see the flare,
we listen.
Sand buries at
our ankles. They appear,
the apples or
melons

Printed along the wallpaper, half
submerged in
their setting, brushed
dark with stems, the silver
flats folded in
fans. Too

Many of the waders grasp the stem
and pull off
the top of an
apple or melon, so
the base fills with
water

And sinks. Silver leaves from the stem. One
small woman's
pearl earring drops
like so many others
in the shallows.
Eardrops.


I met a woman in Viennese
glass. What was
in her jewel case?
A shade that turns over
a blue trellis.
Flower

Theater (or garden) on the flattened
silver wall,
a gray screen where
boats fire, the blush falls
and dyes a cherry
chime.

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