Tag: P M F Johnson

Two Poems by P M F Johnson

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Fire

The comfortable enemy that warms us,
lulls us, kills the cat, smudges
the walls to the devil’s own darkness,
renders air unbreathable.

What you said that night
I believed. Hopes built
from straw and paste.

Up and down the canyon, the stench
of everything lost. How the couple
next door never got out.
A fishhook of doubt.

*

Known And Unknown

I want there to be answers, don’t you?
Little enigmas snuffle through the room
like eager piglets after acorns.
People argue on Friday nights, laugh
in disbelief at each other’s theories,
bang down their mugs. Uncertainty
makes us fear, fear makes us certain.

Sloughing off resentments, sticky mud
on the bottom of my shoes. Making a toy
of my feelings to change them.

A red-tailed hawk drifts out of view
behind oaks. An uneasy beauty,
this puzzle with no borders.
The woods familiar, but nothing
whispered prayers can map.
We don’t know what happens after,
who we are without each other.

I will not transplant my grievances
into larger pots, better lighting.
No amount of watering can
prevent such loss. They say gratitude,
but I’m not so good a farmer as that.

Where the mist gathers, ghost deer browse,
unaffected by their own non-existence,
nor by this new shadow that has joined them.
A few harrowed weeds tossed on the furrows,
their stems like question marks
on the wine-dark soil.

*

P M F Johnson has placed poetry with ONE ART, The Evansville Review, The Main Street Rag, Measure, Nimrod International Journal, The North American Review, Poetry East, The Threepenny Review, and others. He has won The Brady Senryu Award, been awarded Finalist in The Atlanta Review Poetry Contest, and been shortlisted for a Touchstone Award. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, the writer Sandra Rector.

Before The Paint Dries by P M F Johnson

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Before The Paint Dries

When I first met you, we leaned
against each other for practice,
not because we knew of any future
escape from the cigarette desert,
of draped passions in the boss’s chair,
all candle-incandescent, our faces
bright as beadwork on a prayer shawl.
We were like building blocks propped
against the side of the cage,
freeing ourselves to roam
the sidewalks with that
certain greedy, rebel grin.

It’ll be about cities
before we’re done. We get that.
We’re little more than wire loops
in an alley, fallen from cartons
in the dumpster, weathering.
The elements of faith.

Clouds pass, and a deep rain.
We’re not in arrears on
these spirit dreams anymore.
We use the bright blue, the greens
rubbed on with fingertips, a trace
of feline gold, two old lovers,
before the paint dries, hurrying
to get the memories right.

*

P M F Johnson has placed poetry with Blue Unicorn, The Evansville Review, The Main Street Rag, Measure, Nimrod International Journal, The North American Review, Poetry East, The Threepenny Review, and many others. He has won The Brady Senryu Award from The Haiku Society of America, been a Finalist in The Atlanta Review Poetry Contest, and been shortlisted for a Touchstone Award. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, the writer Sandra Rector.