Holly Thompson

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Pinocchio

Shape up. Say grace
for the flesh you came dressed in.
You might try thanks for
splinters, infection.

Your own tech is
precarious, and a melon
splits for less.

My lab rat friends
have handled brains, have, they say,
pressed on Afraid.

                 They walk home
in the dark.

The woods are out, thick as machinery,
wires like string: Ash, sable, the marionette.

Holly Thompson is a North Carolina poet and PhD student. She received a Master's degree in English from Wake Forest University, where she interned at the Irish poetry press. She was the 2026 Storozynski Writer in Residence at the University of Notre Dame. Her work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Mobius: The Journal for Social Change, Foothill Poetry Journal, and others. She has read her work on Rattle's weekly podcast, Rattlecast.