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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
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      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
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      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
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    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
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      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022

Stephanie Johnson

driving to get there

                                          
We sink our shanks into sand.
The water takes us, rubs our porcelain eyes
smooth like a satire.

Low on air, the ride home,
tires straining under the weight of babies,
a mother’s body, a father’s.

Who am I fooling?
It was only me in the car driving
with a friend, a father too, an existentialist.

The story I told was choppy.
Let me start again. Wish that I may
be brief. There is little to say.

On a bridge of land leaning
out into the ocean I unraveled my genome.
Every animal in relation to me flew.

Now I am going home.
The shame in my belly is mine. I am
this light amygdule. Remember that, you?

Now I am cutting tomatoes for
spaghetti sauce. Telling my husband all
the turns I took to get to him.

Wide around the hardest curves
at night, high beams crinkled in thick fog.
Desperate knuckles on the steering wheel.

He says he knew I was coming.
He listened in the twilight
with his cricket song.


waits at the door


In earnest, Lightening
sat on my shoulders, a man so wide
we couldn’t step through the door together.

I let my shoulders flutter,
beating my wings without reprieve.
And then I could carry him, the shimmering man.

The beginning. No rank or order.
My position to extend an invitation to the other.
Really, I was lonely.

Turning in on myself, in to the jungles
dank and humming with jewels of dew.
All darkness serine and complete.

My portion of tenderness, raw and uncut
like a heart rutting in the complex lineage of tissues.
I created all things. Deer. Rain.

Complex synergy. Every day
I waded through the cosmic clutter, joint compounds
in jars, goop for holding the planetary bodies together

But now at the door, the electric man
on my shoulders. He is a child and I am wise.
I am the mother of all things. Peaches and peace.

Tonight I shirk my duty, asking the man
to get down. I need some steam to lift my feathers
where they’ve been pressed like a hem.

Lightening gets down now.
He lathers into the door knob and waits
in the shiny appearance of brass.


 

​
--
Stephanie N. Johnson’s first book of poems, Kinesthesia, was published in 2010 by New Rivers Press. Her writing is inspired by the multitude of ways that humans commune/communicate with the natural world. Stephanie’s poems have appeared in AGNI, Borderlands, BPJ, Dislocate, Massachusetts Review and elsewhere. Stephanie currently lives in northern New Mexico with her husband and two daughters.

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  • Home
  • About
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022