Luke Johnson

Two Poems

Tremolo

Today I’m stunned 

by the marigolds’ movements.

How the whole town 

seems to stop in awe   

and wait until

the wind passes,          

until the tunnel  

we crawled through as children,

no longer howls and spits   

and froths old foam of rain

on empty pastures,        

where I watched my father 

dig a hole once

and weep while dropping 

a match on a mutt’s 

snapped spine.

The field gone up in smoke    

and the silence

that lingered there 

long into daylight        

draping the trees with death.

A dance, perhaps,        

or inverted paradise.   

How the resin rose

when wind blew           

and faded as my father did  

leaving a mound of dirt. 

For years

I felt the floor shake  

and if I pressed my ear

against the ground,                  

could hear her fearful growls 

and whimpers

in need of just a sip.     

Is death not more than a sip?     

A boy walks by

with a blueberry ice cream,

turns to wave hello.        

He’s come from the circus.   

I know this 

by the way he leaps  

and believes each time 

he leaves the ground  

he’s capable of flight. 

Swallows stitch the sky 

and the marigolds cease 

their movements. 

He mirrors flight

with his chubby hands 

and tosses what’s left 

of the cone to the street,

a gift for some feral thing.

Malignant                                                

before I bowl him over        

bruise him 

beat him        beat him 

and bang his head 

against the blacktop 

again and again 

and yell god damn it,  

as his skin bursts 

and spills across 

my palms and fingers, 

my white shirt sleeve 

and shorts,         

I must first challenge 

him in the box          

and beg him              once 

to take a strong 

stride and swing

at the split finger, the curve, 

the rising fastball 

and rage, yes rage, 

of a meteor misting 

an inch from his face 

and spinning 

in a vain pirouette, 

to mock him,

make him feel small.

*

A man who once 

made Nolan Ryan grin 

as he greeted him 

at a try out, said 

can't throw the heat like you,
 
but watch it disappear

in the dust 

like my mother, after booze, 

when his belt 

became a liberation 

that freed his fingers 

of hog farms and flies/of fear, 

when storm light

rippled Houston fields, 

where retired silos 

crouched in wait and hummed 

as sharecroppers 

rose and thrust 

and groaned and thrust
 
and returned 

with hands curved 

inward and crippled, 

cracked 

from pesticides, bleach. 

*

I want to say something

of longing here. 

How he'd watch the poor 

make love in pain 

and moan when burn 

beget vibration

then whimsied like a ghost.

There began 

his body. Touch. 

To tempt a woman

out at dark 

and tongue apart 

her shame. 

My mother tells me

he rarely spoke

or made love.

Would walk the house

at the witching hour,

as if someone

sang in static silence

and spun for him

while he studied them.

*

The spin, the vapor,

his mouth a wound:

the whiff, a strike,

fuck you. My father,

who once brought

squid home still alive

and cubed them on

porch, pathetic now.

Six months

from in the grave.