Two poems by Edward Johnson

If I Were Louise Erdrich

This poem would be a rattlesnake
instead of a souvenir rattle.
It would shape shift, an Ojibwe
just sprung from jail, quiet
and not in a good way,
thick braids loosening in the prairie wind.
Grandmas would gather in the kitchen
over sheet cake and sausages.
Crappies would be fished, muskrat hunted,
the egg and butter money
hidden beneath the floorboards,
a coffee can of sand for butts,
a feral smell of musk and honey.

But I am not Louise Erdrich
and I shouldn’t pretend to be
even in an oblique way.
This poem is mine, so it sputters and farts,
thumbs marbles across the floor.
If it shifts shape, it does so ironically,
afraid to commit to these final words:
a monkey with a Pez dispenser
or a trout reflecting the colors
Through the surface of the river
or maybe a ghost in the willows
whispering the names of the departed
one after the other.

Hey 1980!

Time walks in one direction
But moments in time cozy up,
Blue children tucked in for the night.
You, for example, 1980
Are suddenly closer to World War II
Then you are to us right here
On the balcony in our underwear.

More than three-quarters of my life has unraveled
Since I sat watching the Miracle on Ice
With Pauline and Beman Keister
On a rabbit-eared television
Deeper than it was wide.

You were a real harbinger
Some spring warbler or another
But we failed to follow your golden thread
And now you’re just a shoe box
Of time-bled photos –
Ayatollah Kholmeini, Fred Bilitnikoff,
A Rubik’s Cube and Lech Walesa,
That girl in a bean bag chair
Listening to the final whispers
Of Led Zeppelin’s witchy cunnilingus.

Neighborhoods became subdivisions.
Men whisper beneath the anus of a golf umbrella.
Their words are baby squirrels
Squirming toward the storm drain.

Compared to you, 1980,
2026 doesn’t even read like a year.
It reads like a serial number
That prisoners must wear.

And, here, my friends is the pivot point
Where a more gifted poet
Would bring it all crashing down around you
In a hail of gunfire and glass,
Finger-pointing and absolution.

But, instead I’m stuck inside of you
Not feeling quite that sanctimonious.
In 1980, Richard Pryor lit himself on fire
Smoking freebase cocaine and
I learned my first racist jokes
Which I, just twelve years old, repeated
Whenever I thought I had the right audience
Which to my enduring shame
Was awfully often.

Edward Johnson is a civil rights attorney who has spent the past 30 years representing people living on and over the edge of homelessness. He is now living full-time in a cabin in the North Cascades, working on poems, old and new. He has work recently published or forthcoming from: Eclectica Magazine, Down in the Dirt, Beatnik Cowboy, Indefinite Space, Main Street Rag, Ginosko Literary Journal and Packingtown Review.

Featured image by Vern Skaug, sourced from the North Dakota Office of the Governor