Julie Allyn Johnson | Cimarron & More

Cimmarron

with a nod to James Wright, with love & gratitude

where, now, are the remains of the birds

high above our sleepy little tents

the ones who woke us far too early,

their chipper birdsong an abomination

to our hung-over bodies,

our thundering heads?

marauding with a perverse enthusiasm,

barreling through an otherwise quiet,

still campsite, hints of embers not

yet extinguished, red-tipped constellations

in a blackened caldron of the night’s insanities

alcohol-infused membranes, our containers

did not then appreciate the noisy interruption

of our slumbers. in later years, a pre-dawn serenade

such as we experienced in those wild & turbulent days of youth,

fills me now with awe and wonder and blossoming inspiration.

yesteryear’s fallen chorus,

decayed bodies, bones to ashes

aloft in airborne flight, soil sustenance,

fodder for new life

greenings for a millennium…

I have, it seems, acquired far too many pairs of shoes.

Psychedelic

CW: strong language

white rabbit moves with an elegant grace

slender hands, arcs and hoops and spheres

darkened niches in a wildscape of smoke and sound

iron butterfly & steppenwolf whisper with a lurid urgency

naivete revisits my wide-eyed innocence, my virgin ears, then

to my horror, you pull a pack of cigarettes from your purse,

extracting one with a practiced deftness

I cannot help but notice

those tight mini-skirts you wear,

even in the depths of our Iowa winters

your breasts, melon-shaped & firm, still-developing

reading love letters from the boy you’re obsessed with

I cringe to read where he calls you cunt

Julie Allyn Johnson is a sawyer’s daughter from the American Midwest whose current obsession is tackling the rough and tumble sport of quilting and the accumulation of fabric. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her poetry can be found in Star*Line, The Briar Cliff Review, Phantom Kangaroo, Lyrical Iowa, Cream Scene Carnival, Coffin Bell, The Lake, Haikuniverse, Chestnut Review and other journals.