ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Juleen Eun Sun Johnson was born in Seoul, South Korea. She was adopted and taken to Valdez, Alaska, where she spent her formative years. Johnson earned an MFA in Visual Studies from PNCA. She’s currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Johnson will be attending Oxford University this summer. Her work has been published in: Cirque: A Literary Journal, Nervous Breakdown, The Rio Grande Review, The Dunes Review, The Indianapolis Review, The Cortland Review, other journals, and anthologies. Johnson is a MacDowell Colony Fellow. She currently writes and creates art in Massachusetts.
It was A Small Sudden City
A child who finds hope in broken things
a bike with a square tire can still take them places
flies halo overhead
to smell the nectar sweat
statisticians do not have numbers
for these bodies.
To shred skin
To shred brokenness
Travel well
Use an umbrella
to rid a path of pigeons. Realize
you are ceremoniously performing a ritual.
Half pretend to anoint
the pigeons with holy water. In the deep pockets of night.
Still learning
how to die.
The beginning of the poem begins with an image from my Childhood. “It was A Small Sudden City” was written when I was walking up the Pearl District to my husband’s office in Portland, Or. It had just finished raining. I had velcroed my umbrella up. That split second a flock of pigeons landed. I flung my umbrella at them to rid them from my path but I accidentally sprinkled them with rain water.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
