Meg Thompson’s new collection opens with “After I read the letter that told me I had abnormal cells.”

my room turned into a field / and the carpet needed to be baled / the way it did when I was little / or before I knew / they were on my cervix. / I laid down in / extended child’s pose, / the hay scratching my arms, / my normal arms.

Thompson leads deftly through a prosaic scenery that could be any of our lives, beckoning with her luminous lines, beckoning us follow “…touching the flimsy / ticket just to know it’s there, that I can follow her / on the escalator up to the city”– in this case, guided by a generous writer with a vibrant and humble voice, into the city of poetry.