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.