Liner Notes to Benjamin
Most nights our mother
makes a gesture while she sleeps:
one hand balled in a fist,
while the other slaps the headboard
& she chokes.
*
Too many times
she’s strolled a snowy dark
with eyes rolled back in her head.
Balanced a bridge rail
to tempt the wind —
mocking the body’s balance.
*
Brother, come.
Spread snow along the floor
& shape your feet in little indentations.
I’ll follow you into the fields.
*
When I hold my breath
an inch under bathwater,
you crouch by the sink
with a bird in your teeth,
both eyes puddled & stark.
Why do you smile
when I speak your name,
spin from my whispers, & fade?
*
Forgive the times
I begged
because the wine was gone
& her hands began
to itch,
because I could not
carry your name.
All she wished
was to touch your lips,
turn their tarnish to feathers.
*
We have these mittens:
booties woven blue
with lace like silken pearls
& this photo:
dad bearded,
both hands pressed to her belly:
one black kite
in a sky beginning
to smear.
Lice & Feathers
Chloe’s booties
left unfinished & kept in plastic
in a box beneath the shed.
When alone, I’d
wear them on my thumbs
& imagine her heels first wobble
then the want to run away.
*
Months our mother
gnawed her tongue & spit pieces of it
into day old glasses of water.
They’d float like fetal tissue
then stick to the glasses like warts.
*
Priest prayed
& doctors mocked their prayers
offered pills:
one white tablet
after each sudden tremor.
*
Twice I heard a baby wail
in the wall behind my bed.
*
Twice my mother bound my mouth
blew smoke inside my nose.
*
I’d dig until my nails were gone
her wail a drowned violin.
*
She’d pick until her skin was scarred
in search of lice & feathers.

Luke Johnson’s chapbook, :boys, is forthcoming from Blue Horse Press. His poems can be found or are forthcoming at American Journal of Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, Connotation Press, The Florida Review, Greensboro Review, Kenyon Review, Narrative, Nimrod, Tinderbox and others. He was a Finalist for both the Pablo Neruda Prize and the Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Award, and is completing his MFA in Poetry at Sierra Nevada College.