LUKE JOHNSON
What good are hands without intent, touch without a forewound?
You’ve come to box
his flannel coats and boots
and long to sit in search
of something
holy or meaningful,
or maybe you’ve come
to curse the spider
tombed in a corner,
where once, years earlier,
you hid afraid
his rage would find
you righteous space
to seed a gale
of fathers and boys
and boys who father
boys who father
belts and buckshots
a spiraling bruise.
Such beauty
in terror, such peace.
To yield inside a shadow
and scream like sheep
before the sheers,
then stop, submissive,
tangled by twine,
held in the curve
of a hand.
I am speaking in parable.
A watch without battery,
blue vase
broken to shards.
The crease
where he laid his head
at night
and dreamed of dancing
bars in Barstow,
with women
who whispered
his name.
My mother tells me
his touch
was sweet,
and when he finished
he’d pop a match
and mimic its bloom
with his mouth,
but who cares?
From an attic window
I face the field,
to watch a scrub jay
dart the brush
in search of fallen seed.
It pauses, briefly,
then scans
for snakes, slips
away into the dark.
Luke Johnson is the author of Quiver (Texas Review Press 2023), A Slow Indwelling (Harbor Editions 2024) and Distributary, forthcoming from Texas Review Press fall 2025. Quiver was a finalist for the 2024 California Book Award. Johnson was recently awarded runner up for the Robert Frost Residency through Dartmouth College. You can find more of his work at Poetry Daily, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere.