Good Friday

Julia Johnson

__________

Today even crueler than yesterday, you in your suit, tucked in, great and holy Friday. I keep you in the book I do not hold. The brave clouds roll in. Maybe you were meant to balance a glass on your head in my dream. Maybe Fellini taught me about white clowns. You taught me about the spectacular observation of things. I can’t believe it is not something I want to soon overcome. To forget a name or to lose something like a key easily replaced and then seen again on a highway sign as a reminder or as a copy identical to the last one. But here we are in a sudden shift. To everything having meaning, down to the new slow drip of the faucet or to the peek of white from the season’s first peony.

__________

People Are at Their Telescopes

Julia Johnson

__________

Waiting for the center of our galaxy to be in view. Waiting for a monumental occurrence we already know: An M87 black hole whose dark center is darker than before. A reddish doughnut, as they say, the color of a fox. We find ourselves wheeling around in it, a bottomless vortex. How we wait for the closest view, inside a spoon, but like a faraway pulse I am afraid we are looking again now. A sheet will come over our toes while we lie perfectly still. What are we doing there we ask ourselves while eating a small tart. The shape a rough circle in the eye seen from above. An approach to the extraordinary and suspicious universe. I follow you from the observatory’s highest deck. Put you in the sharpest focus.

__________

Julia Johnson, a native of New Orleans, is the author of three poetry collections: Subsidence (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2016), The Falling Horse (Factory Hollow Press, 2011), and Naming the Afternoon (LSU Press, 2002). She teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky.

To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program, please visit Submissions for details.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

Next