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Luke Johnson

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Luke Johnson’s poems can be found at Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, Florida Review, Frontier, Cortland Review, Nimrod and elsewhere. His manuscript in progress was recently named a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, The Levis through Four Way Press, The Vassar Miller Award and is forthcoming fall of 2023 from Texas Review Press. Website: lukethepoet.com Twitter: @Lukesrant

On the 1st anniversary of my father's death, I

sit with my uncle in the half-dark watching
            I Love Lucy
                                    and laugh at how
my uncle sucks a cigarillo slow enough
            the smoke ringlets
his nostrils
            and rises
                                    so the fan which slices them
                                                is suddenly       holy
and the flannel coat clutched with father’s sweat         holy
                        and the boots
he wore            holy 
                                    and the abalone ashtray           holy
and the hog he shot from fifty yards
and hung on the far wall                      holy
                                                                        the warbling lyrics
                                                                                    of night herons            holy 
I press the smoke slow in my palm and pant
            quietly              holy
                                                cod on the stovetop: sizzling: 
 
ii.
 
                                                cod on the stovetop: cold
and my uncle out with a bottle of boons
in his lap
                                                and an old mutt licking the wound
on his heel.
 
            I am tempted by the oven flame, the gas
and all its hissing, 
                                                how a wolf spider huffs
                                                            when caught in a snare
and will eat itself alive. I’ve swallowed the weather
 
            and wear black to mimic sleeted streets
                        the spray from passing tires, 
                                                            but sometimes, warm, 
on a day in August, 
when the wind
                                                has fucked the white acacia
                                                            and wild onions finger
                                                                                    the fields, I 
am asked again if what’s in me is         holy
                                                            if a crater is      holy
                                                                                    
if the weather shift       holy.  
                       
                                                And the song
                                                            of my mouth
                                                                        is unmoored.

Commentary

Luke on “On the 1st anniversary of my father's death, I”:
 
Stay with me here: Recently I re-watched the emotionally brilliant movie Monster’s Ball with Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry. In it, there is the iconic line from Berry: “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” And whew, this time that line stuck in my craw. It pierced me in such a truthful place, I felt the tectonics of my heart and body move. You see, for 39 of my 40 years  I was bound by a daddy-wound so deep, it affected every area of my life: my family, my wife, my kids, my job, my relationship to the world, myself. It was a black vacuum, a whirlpool, by which the fragments of myself were swallowed. I was barely able to stay above water. I was split. Divided. Like a lion with a limp. Lost. Forgive me. I know I’m being a little emotional. So I’ll land the plane here: my first book Quiver, due out fall of 2023 with Texas Review Press, is a book of exorcism and reckoning. It names the ghosts so the ghosts can move on. It is “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” When my dad lay dying in a hospital bed, a stroke leaving him in a near vegetative state, I finally got to touch his face and hands. Kiss his cheek. Tell him all the things. I got to reconcile in such a holy way my wound was closed. That February day in 2021 exchanged my daddy’s life for my healing. Because of that I now miss him the way a boy should. This isn’t glorifying him. He was a broken, crap dad who didn’t know how to love. But he left me with so many wonderful things: my love of nature, food, my laugh. And so yes, grief is layered. It’s filled with seasons. But it’s good. “On the 1st anniversary of my father’s death” is a poem in my next project. It signifies the sequel to Quiver. This new project is developing into a book of grief and praise, light melancholia. The line movement in this poem is meant to represent grief’s dance. And I’m glad it seems to have worked. 
 
Assistant Editor Dia Roth on “On the 1st anniversary of my father's death, I”:

What first struck me about Luke Johnson’s “On the 1st anniversary of my father’s death, I” was its treatment of time as it relates to the traces of our grief. Johnson deftly slows us down such that “the fan which slices [smoke rings] / is suddenly / holy.” The poem continues to show us such holiness in the father’s objects, all frozen in time—a flannel coat “still clutched with sweat,” worn boots, a prize hog hung on the wall. We’re trapped, with the poem’s speaker, in a room of grief, smoke hanging thick and still in the air.

But as the poem moves into its second section, time accelerates—as so often happens in the wake of loss. The cod that was moments ago sizzling on the stovetop is now cold, the uncle who was blowing smoke rings is asleep in his chair. In the poem’s newfound expanse, where “the wind has fucked the white acacia / and wild onions finger / the fields,” the speaker asks us to reconsider holiness, this time wondering if “what’s in [him] is / holy.”
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