Untitled by John Gregory Brown
TOPO
of relief. No more of us can safely fit & the weather intends
for changing. Inland, the weasel. Colorless
skipping across the drifts. Branches snap under a mass of ice.
More melting, more protest. The political apparatus upon us
like a doused rag & we do not go
numb. We don’t act like we don’t grieve the broken limbs ––––
oddly cold when we grab them ––––
or grasp what fastens when we give ourselves to wind
TECTONICS: A SONNET
& in the broken trunk, the heartwood drips
its viscous substance. Hollowing the core,
some principle’s forgotten, pith all stripped
to loosened dust, & beaks go seeking pore.
Today, I hate the modern gesture. Still,
my fetters. Orbit slowly, torrid form.
The taste of earth eroding, canyons spill.
Unsolid structure, oceans close what’s torn
& bleeding meekly, wave on wave on tree
too thick with mangrove crab. Belated change.
Below the boat, beneath the water, plea
the fucked tectonic plates, the ones that scrape
upon the others. Breccia crusts & moans.
It never holds. Our floor: subducted. Stoned.
About the author:
Joseph Johnson teaches in Barranquilla, Colombia. He received his MFA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and his work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Chicago Review’s Poetry Staff Feature; Forklift, Ohio; Pleiades; Prelude; Southern Indiana Review; Washington Square Review; Yalobusha Review; and elsewhere.
In the artist’s words:
Born and raised in New Orleans, John Gregory Brown is the author of the novels Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery; The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur; Audubon’s Watch; and A Thousand Miles from Nowhere. His honors include a Lyndhurst Prize, the Lillian Smith Award, the John Steinbeck Award, a Howard Foundation fellowship, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award, and the Library of Virginia Book Award.His visual art has been displayed in individual and group exhibitions and has appeared online and in print in Hayden’s Ferry Review, the New England Review, Flock, The Brooklyn Review, Gulf Stream, and elsewhere.
He is the Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of English at Sweet Briar College in Virginia, where he lives with his wife, the novelist Carrie Brown.
