The Sun Low, a Vase of Dried Flowers
POETRY
by Brian Johnson
January tenth: the sun low, a vase of dried flowers in the window, a smudge
On a leftover glass. Our cat Miou-Miou died last month.
The chimney needs cleaning from all the fires. A half cord since Thanksgiving.
The tree should be stripped and thrown out. Grease on the bedsheets, hairs.
A question about spelling, and who lost the cookbook. The mice returned.
Reiman’s dog in the yard. Charlie, the leash.
Our ten-year-old daughter has six gray hairs. The snow days will come.
Last time shoveling in the dark, with floodlights.
A few cards, not enough to hang in the hall. More, a lot more, before, other years.
Upstairs, putting on a sweater. The name I just remembered.
Brian Johnson is the author of Self-Portrait, a chapbook published in 2000 by Quale Press; Torch Lake and Other Poems, a 2008 collection from Web del Sol Press and a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award; and Site Visits: Poems and Images, a 2014 limited edition portfolio with the painter Burghard Müller-Dannhausen, published by edition s beck in Germany. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, The Dodge, Bennington Review, DMQ Review, and Court Green. Johnson has served as editor of Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics and associate editor of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, and has taught creative writing at Yale, Brown, and Providence College.
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