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Four 
​by Jessica E. Johnson

Every Conifer’s a Mood

​On a hill 
where someone planted you:
needles skyward
sensate iterations of self
open to a too-gray heaven  

Or lone 
at the edge of the yard
trailing a thousand gestures
toward the ground  

You blue   

You flag  

You crowned 
with upright cones  

In the ravine
a verging beast of you  
placing, displacing
one another

In the ravine the cold thrive
of you a long 
close winter 

Days of Fog & Sky on a Dimmer Switch

Block-gray ships sight each other through mist.

Sure motion, gentle mass I can only see in you. 

I no longer hear the engine in my chest. 

We are giant & we float & it’s a miracle.

You, at the counter dry each cup and place

It gently where it goes.

Dry Summer, Wet Fall, Long Winter

- after Tranströmer
​There’s a kind of rain here running through the trees
hurrying down the tight needles.
It has a job. It gathers what didn’t survive
to its rainbreast deep in the ground like I do
in dreams that small creatures in my care have died.

When the sky lets up the rain stops.
See it waiting on the ground in silver discs when we go out.
The water shrinks like we soon will into a darkness
where the dead feed their visions to the living.

Poetry

​The body gathered from long-held volumes
The body bookmarked from feeds
The body feeding on hard detail
The body composing smudged feeling
The body stretching and stretching toward what the students get up to
The body filled in by dm’s
The body the spark that lights my husband’s laughter 
The body the smell of a candle blown out
The body an indigo shadow 
The body collecting between my eyes
The body slipping away before sleep
The body taking shape there finally 
The body an unglazed ceramic forest
The forest thick and vernacular 
The thick forest thin enough to break
The inexpert forest giving way to an uneven sea
A light underneath the sea moving

Jessica Johnson
Jessica E. Johnson writes poetry and nonfiction. She's the author of the book-length poem Metabolics and the chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other, an Oregon Book Award finalist. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, The New Republic, Poetry Northwest, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, Annulet Poetics, The Southeast Review, and Sixth Finch. She lives in Portland, Oregon and co-hosts the Constellation Reading Series at Tin House.
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  • Home
    • Poetry
    • Translations
    • Fiction
    • Interviews
    • Essays
    • Photography
    • Fine Arts
  • Masthead
  • Issues
    • Spring 2023
    • Fall 2022
    • Summer 2022
    • Exilé Sans Frontières
  • AR Tunes
  • Submissions
  • Contact