Maureen Thorson   PERMANENTLY 1975 His home was devoted to ABBA. He lived in the restive staccato Of memorabilia. 1975 was just on pause. The fire and force of ABBA. The infinite skirts of their music Rustled onward in this dollhouse theater. At first light, he woke to the piquant airs Of holy Swedish dance-rock. The doves of dawn Backed up by the wide throb of Jan Schaffer On electric guitar. Synthic animal yowling Now transformed: sacred, superior to The profane domesticities of the merely unbodied. He thought: no witchcraft like Gunnarsson On bass! Meanwhile, Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, and Anni-Frid Grinned down from the walls, the tolerant saints Of the blond shag hair-dos, of the miracle cheekbones That sliced night into dawn after dawn.   STEVE McQUEEN ON HIS MOTORCYCLE There was only one Steve McQueen and you Were he, meant to be Watched in exhibition, Rugged good looks and “I live for myself and I answer to nobody.” The unexpected camera Angles you had to shoulder During your short life Remind me: add to watchlist, Add to watchlist, add To watchlist: The basic facts, Quotes, and a filmography Most charming. The tribute Page is closed and all The pieces are mixes, but “Acting is still like racing, You need the same Concentration,” and in An ad for Wrangler jeans I see the same sort of yellow Landscape that a tripwire Was strung across, courtesy Of you and damn the nazis, Archivally encapsulated Inside my skull: You’re A permanent feature on The bill. You’ll stay that way, Hunched sleekly over The fields of wheat where I hear the engine gunning Just before you race offscreen, Before you escape and never die Of cancer in a ward in Juarez.   THE MEAT MAGI The lollipop wheels Of the meatwagon awaken The schoolkids of suburbia. Even the manicured lawns And polka-dotted mushrooms Seem to pop, to suddenly declare, “Hey look, it’s some meat!” And though he’s worn to the bone, The driver’s so jolly With his kid gloves And his little puppets of the presidents. He’s got presents For every chosen child, and Would ya just look at ‘em streaming From every gimcrack bungalow To heed his wagon’s call, While he looks beneficently at this Gift of himself, flesh of his flesh, All for the sake of the kiddies, The good little boys and each girl.   UP SHE RISES If the china dog on the windowsill Catches the sailor’s eye, If the sailor’s eye—blue and blank— A note that follows others As a wave: ...................... Then up she rises, From a throat parboiled, A socket of fog, descending. If the wind should strike its colors, Then his timbre sets its track, And if his rum-soaked voice should carry His song holds you on its back, Wet fingers to the wind, Gulls shrieking through the fog. And through that fog, you’ll see The bloodshot china dog Reflected in his eye, the eye that holds The little figure like a note As it clears its porcelain throat To join into the sailor’s melody, Into his roundelay of waves, The hosannah of gathering dust. SUPERMAN WOULD LIKE TO COME DOWN NOW Now only the ghostlight is left, and your old bones gather bruises from the forward straining of your arms. The curl on your forehead grows long. You’re done with the cyclical universe, with stopping traffic by your mere appearance. Someone has taken the ladder away, and the green screen is blank, unladen with the lacy fire escapes of Metropolis. The actress playing Lois is not your true love, and even you cannot now save yourself, your x-ray eyes a special effect, your seemingly impervious frame the result of foam props, and your enemy not Lex but the body, its realness: Your true kryptonite.     Maureen Thorson is the author of two chapbooks, Novelty Act (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004), and Mayport, winner of the Poetry Society of America's National Chapbook Fellowship for 2006. She currently lives in Washington, DC, where she runs Big Game Books, the tiniest press in the world, and writes poems about film noir, mysterious islands, and robots.   Published in Volume 9, Number 2, Spring 2008. Read more by this author: Thorson's Intro to The Museum Issue, Vol. 10:1 (Winter 2009) Maureen Thorson: Tenth Anniversary Issue