POEMS
Confederacy
Mismatched pupils: a blue, a brown. Speckled teeth.
Monuments below grade. Late photographs gone missing.
Substitute teachers descended from birds: Falcon, Wren, Veery.
Blondes, statuesque, with their bald spots.
Names with an extra letter: Llama, Aaron.
Some negligible sky. An illegible line of flags.
Violin in a mobile home park. Wings, innards, by fencepost.
The word Allimay applied to the snow.
Sandboxes with dogs in them. Lazy smoke in the cricket glades.
People stopped on a highway ramp. Cloudlessness. Long–covered furniture.
Monuments below grade. Late photographs gone missing.
Substitute teachers descended from birds: Falcon, Wren, Veery.
Blondes, statuesque, with their bald spots.
Names with an extra letter: Llama, Aaron.
Some negligible sky. An illegible line of flags.
Violin in a mobile home park. Wings, innards, by fencepost.
The word Allimay applied to the snow.
Sandboxes with dogs in them. Lazy smoke in the cricket glades.
People stopped on a highway ramp. Cloudlessness. Long–covered furniture.
Brian Johnson is the author of Torch Lake and Other Poems, a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award, and Site Visits, a collaborative work with the German painter Burghard Müller–Dannhausen. He is the recipient of two Connecticut Commission on the Arts Fellowships and former editor of Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary, Massachusetts Review, West Branch, and many other journals.
Self-Portrait on Fortieth Birthday - Audio
I spent it alone on the freezing docks (Matthew Arnold said a man’s life is over at thirty). My mood was lower than ever (Moods are a big influence on our being, Heidegger thought). I saw my twenties (The Jazz Age); my old girlfriends (Simenon slept with 10,000 women); my long mornings bent over poems (St. Jerome in his study). In the end, a professorship. I arrived in time to please my grandparents (Ellis Island passage, 1907). You’re a figure, regardless of the cost (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus). I seemed slightly larger then, and the world seemed more promising, higher up (Silent upon a peak in Darien). Now I’m the only one wondering: when will I set sail, and when will I find that small town (Jerusalem) among the rocks?
Luxury Appointments - Audio
The Earlobe - Audio
The Fig-Trees of Italy
Sadly, and so like a man, jumping from one square to the next, I can see you, but I can’t express it. An awful lot of young partridges and young doves will say it.
That’s what I can’t say, what I want to say.
You have the cambala annulata, the Kyrie eleison. I can say the names. It’s the words that bother me. Better without words. Better with my eyes closed. And the windows open.
In the early summer among the fig-trees of Italy.
That’s what I can’t say, what I want to say.
You have the cambala annulata, the Kyrie eleison. I can say the names. It’s the words that bother me. Better without words. Better with my eyes closed. And the windows open.
In the early summer among the fig-trees of Italy.
The King's English
Flasks is harder to say than Roman à Cléf. Binge is hard, Relevé soft. One is easier to write than Another.
Bread is easier to say than Nomina, Nighttime easier than Interregnum. Constantinople is harder to say than Lincoln.
Lost is harder to write than Dynamics of the Plain, Hosewater harder than Rain. Abracadabra is easier than Defenestration.
Redoubling is much easier to say than Parting. Partway is easier to write than Parting. Arthuriana in all ways easier than Parting.
Injured is harder to write than Incarnadine. Rose of Sharon is easier to say than Turtlehead. Past is softer than Passed.
1
Bread is easier to say than Nomina, Nighttime easier than Interregnum. Constantinople is harder to say than Lincoln.
Lost is harder to write than Dynamics of the Plain, Hosewater harder than Rain. Abracadabra is easier than Defenestration.
Redoubling is much easier to say than Parting. Partway is easier to write than Parting. Arthuriana in all ways easier than Parting.
Injured is harder to write than Incarnadine. Rose of Sharon is easier to say than Turtlehead. Past is softer than Passed.
1
Torch Lake
I see a birdbath here, but no birds; a bottle of rum, but no drinkers; a piano, but no family.
These days all look the same: voiceless, headless. I am tempted to walk out, but no one would call after me, “Come back or else!”
So I stare at the water-rings and listen to the crickets.
Thy kingdom.
These days all look the same: voiceless, headless. I am tempted to walk out, but no one would call after me, “Come back or else!”
So I stare at the water-rings and listen to the crickets.
Thy kingdom.
Window Seat
Every flight is a surrender. You book them until you are too poor to fly, or can no longer
bear it. Today someone is flying you to Berlin, last week you were flown to Helsinki, and
next month you will be taken to Rome. On business. What business? You can’t say.
Nobody
can really say. Your hair and wristwatch and suit are just beyond description; nobody in the
cabins can explain your look, your looks. In time the water is brought, it sits before you in a
wide-mouthed cup. How clear they are—the water, the cup— mirroring one another! But
the water tastes stale, as if it were left over from an earlier flight. You walk sideways, slowly,
to the toilet. It is stainless steel, like your mother’s fruitbowl from her house in Detroit. You
can still see the apple sitting there, an imperial red, the last of its siblings, in the mote-high
light just before sunset. The plane begins shaking, and swooning, almost on cue, as soon as
the seatbelt lights are turned off. Then come the pilot’s words, so measured, so parental,
followed by silence and the steadying of the plane. The girl across the aisle is casually pretty;
her hair is unkempt, she chews her nails. She looks Dutch, or perhaps Swedish—tall, with
the coloring of a white peach. And you wonder how many virgins are on the flight, how
many of the older women have had affairs, or might be flying toward their first affair. The
flight attendant is circulating the bag, and smiling in her make-up. You cannot fathom the
make-up, the extent of it. Lady Aoki, the Noh, comes to mind. Overhead, the in-flight
movie plays silently: Home Alone. You missed the title sequence, but you recognize the actors.
After a few minutes, you remove your gaze and turn it to the window; the plane has passed
the black Atlantic and flown into British airspace. It is sliding inexorably over the shires
toward London Heathrow, carrying itself and its passengers toward Terminal 1, where you
must gather your personal effects and disembark. You pull on your trenchcoat, shaking the
shoulders into position, glancing at the Dutch girl, her fingers, her toes, a final time. You
shuffle out of the cabin and find the connecting flight. It should land in Berlin sometime
before noon, in a light rain.
bear it. Today someone is flying you to Berlin, last week you were flown to Helsinki, and
next month you will be taken to Rome. On business. What business? You can’t say.
Nobody
can really say. Your hair and wristwatch and suit are just beyond description; nobody in the
cabins can explain your look, your looks. In time the water is brought, it sits before you in a
wide-mouthed cup. How clear they are—the water, the cup— mirroring one another! But
the water tastes stale, as if it were left over from an earlier flight. You walk sideways, slowly,
to the toilet. It is stainless steel, like your mother’s fruitbowl from her house in Detroit. You
can still see the apple sitting there, an imperial red, the last of its siblings, in the mote-high
light just before sunset. The plane begins shaking, and swooning, almost on cue, as soon as
the seatbelt lights are turned off. Then come the pilot’s words, so measured, so parental,
followed by silence and the steadying of the plane. The girl across the aisle is casually pretty;
her hair is unkempt, she chews her nails. She looks Dutch, or perhaps Swedish—tall, with
the coloring of a white peach. And you wonder how many virgins are on the flight, how
many of the older women have had affairs, or might be flying toward their first affair. The
flight attendant is circulating the bag, and smiling in her make-up. You cannot fathom the
make-up, the extent of it. Lady Aoki, the Noh, comes to mind. Overhead, the in-flight
movie plays silently: Home Alone. You missed the title sequence, but you recognize the actors.
After a few minutes, you remove your gaze and turn it to the window; the plane has passed
the black Atlantic and flown into British airspace. It is sliding inexorably over the shires
toward London Heathrow, carrying itself and its passengers toward Terminal 1, where you
must gather your personal effects and disembark. You pull on your trenchcoat, shaking the
shoulders into position, glancing at the Dutch girl, her fingers, her toes, a final time. You
shuffle out of the cabin and find the connecting flight. It should land in Berlin sometime
before noon, in a light rain.
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