Monday, December 6, 2021

Laura Anella Johnson With A Periphery Sofa Stretch, An Ageless Residency, and Weekly Lesson Plans

my cat

(for Gracie)


 a creak—you nosing through the door  

to head butt, knead, and collapse.


a subtle swish and click—

pouncing, arching hair-tie whack.


a periphery sofa stretch.


a dark-hallway shift and glide.


i turn, adjust my eyes, 


it’s merely a shadow, 


a whispering mail-stack slide and clack,


a wayward breeze-tossed leaf (you’d like that),


a settling, cat-hair-sprinkled house, 


the dog lifting her head (remembering

your goodbye lick?)


a door-disturbing draft,


nothingness afoot,


or somehow my cat.



What

(for Anthony Perotta)


When you searched my eyes, our faces inches apart,

we were seated in a breath-filled dining hall.

Banter bounced off the 1970’s-paneled walls, 

silverware clinked dinner plates.

Seven or eight other writers-in-training sat around 

our white-clothed, breadcrumb-scattered table


still laughing about some thing you’d said at lunch,

too dirty, they surmised, for me to hear.


 “Whisper it in my ear,” I tempted,

and you—Mr. Laid-Back Uproarious Bostonian Accent—

looked at me—Mrs. Sheltered Bible Belt Twang—

like you were measuring something...until 


silver-and-purple-haired Susan’s “If he whispers that in your ear, 

your husband will have grounds for divorce!”


 and now it doesn’t matter of course because 

you’ve broken away, slipped unforeseen into 

an ageless residency midway through 

our writers’ residencies,


 and what made your eyes 

look like that...almost...almost 

telling me something you didn't tell me, 

what stood tipped-toed, peered out

your spirit window into mine,

what held it back and 

what wanted to let it go


 and the other whats 

that hid behind 

your eyes, and deeper, 

have drifted away...


floating intangible tidbits

—dirty, pure, painful, hopeful—

beyond reach somewhere.

Those ones you measured

and determined best unshared.


Lost 


The inklings that nudged me while driving or in 

a meeting, or chipping away at some 

other required business, ideas I can’t list in

this poem because I’ve forgotten them... 


 the impulses I didn't 

explore have sunk and drifted deep beneath 

waves of things to-do...and will never be poems. 


                            I sacrificed them to 

busyness, to typed-up ESOL instructions

sent in the timeliest manner possible to 

my students’ other teachers,

to undoing my Infinite-Campus-online-gradebook

errors listed on my error report. 

To learning BlackBoard and loading it with 

content to show I've embraced our 

school’s vision,


 to teaching the newest high school generation—

a welcome reprieve from other responsibilities—

until the class clown in the front row yells

“I try! I try! I try! I try” 

while I give grammar warm-up instructions, 

then stop and fill out her lunch detention form;


 to weekly lesson plans 

laid out in six-by-seven charts,

to exit and entrance letters sent home to 

parents who may or may not read them,

who may or may not be able,

to our new way of testing new students, 

that one that pulls them away 

from more and more classes, as I am 

pulled away from another crack of light—


 an impulse sacrificed to my paycheck

which I’ll use to buy a new mattress

—whenever there's time—

to relieve the ache in my lower psyche.




Laura Anella Johnson is the author of Not Yet (Kelsay Books, 2019) and The Color of Truth (coming soon by Kelsay Books). Her work has appeared in a range of online and print journals and anthologies including Literary Mama, Snakeskin, Reach of Song, and Tipton. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University and teaches English/ESOL at Fayette County High School in Georgia.