Jenny Johnson
Spruce Knob
On my own now, I pause
in a patch of freckled light,
tug clumps of earth back,
dig a hole in the ground,
and prepare to poop
on a chilly mountain summit.
I can’t name these mosses,
but I know that bears eat them
preparing to hibernate
because it stops them up good
for months, a natural butt plug.
It’s so windy spruce branches
flag away from the wind.
A trunk is a mast and I am a sail
when I grip a sapling for support,
lean back fully and squat,
feeling the sway of my hands
holding my hands.
Glory and Simplicity
All I know is that no one knows me like you do.
Running at dusk through the starry-eyed snakeroot
you turn toward the smallest notion, toward what could be nothing—
a fluff of blown seeds, a trance of branching light,
but just once was a tufted parliament of owlets peering back—
Surprise. I am still open to my despair
to disrupting it, not at first noticing
inches away your hand writing is a fist
knuckling through its own spiral of shadows
is someone I’ll never fully know
howling through tangles of
jewelweed you know by heart
is the owls, you say
Symphony Conducted with a Riding Crop
How to ride, to ride, to ride, I could show you
Gigi, horse of my childhood, with her warm hot flanks
All the girls I never could be in the Apple Blossom Parade tossing flags in the air
Inside I make my small town salute
Outside the ninebark swishes through the air
Jenny Johnson is the author of In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books, 2017). Her honors include a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and a NEA Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, New England Review, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at West Virginia University, and she is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program. She lives in Pittsburgh.