Poetry by Heather Johnson

Imitations of Burning
 
You dreamt of drowning,
A dying that went on
and on, a gin-soaked dream
that followed you into waking.
You found novelty
in fear, which you wrapped
around yourself like a fur coat,
stroking its coarse grain.
 
I’ve no success with
drowning. I’m only good
at burning. I tried beating
myself against a stone
to strike a spark,
but his hands crumbled
into fists, grappled, flung
me to the linoleum floor.
 
I was mute coal giving
off residual heat. Even
the grip of my son’s
mouth at my nipple, tugging
a strand called maternal
love, couldn’t lead
me to living. My dreams
were bleak—the underside
of waking. I tried to smother
my frenetic thoughts
underwater. No luck.
It was too shallow,
too tame.
 
My catalyst
came, his vulgar
love inciting want. I don’t know
how we did it—immersing
ourselves into each other.
The closest I’ve come
to drowning. We couldn’t
sustain it—slipped
through the eye
of each other, through
the boiling foam, to find
waking. We’re not meant
to live in another.
 
You drowned
on air, on being. My landscape
is arid—parched
weeds rasp with the faint
stirring of the evening.
This is where I thrive,
in the vibrancy of self-
consumption, in the novelty
of burning.
 
 



Dear Dr. C
 
You are an interloper who revels in the dregs
of my clouded essence. You tell me separate yourself
from the ache, don’t overlap with it. Otherwise,
it’ll become your norm. Still I seek to detach my spirit—drunken,
clumsy attempts to spill out of my body.
 
You tell me be mindful, be fully present. It’s a set-up
for failure. You well know my psyche resists being bound--
it seeks to expand beyond me, to project onto the sky’s green,
luminescent belly, which drags along the cottonwoods’
spires and snags on the steel streetlights.
 
You urge me to Stay, to write on--I break
my bones so they’ll be that much stronger, I bite
my wrists, gnaw on palm and knuckle to instigate renewal. I peel
back my skin and probe past tendon looking for new being.
 
You sip at the dregs of me, witnessing, as I pick out
the fluted bone of my wrist, dip it in ink,
and scratch it against the paper.
 



 
Patricide
 
“Daddy, I have had to kill you.” -Sylvia Plath
 
Who said patricide was so very bad?
You’re kind of dead already.
You’re a horror movie zombie risen
from the desert earth where we grow
squash, corn, and zucchini.
 
I think it must be the Anasazi,
who lived in the juniper-studded
valley before us, who resurrected you.
Mud-caked, you shamble with an exaggerated
masculine gait, viciousness in every
pigeon-toed bootstep.
 
You’re Nosferatu—dead thing gorged
on the livelihood of others, dead thing
whose only vitality is coaxed by the threat
of sullen silences and the weight of your fists.
 
You’re such a good fascist you’ve convinced
my mother of your sacred philosophy,
your Love is Violence manifesto.
 
I dance the Enemy Way
Ceremony, prepare myself to go to war--
I spew the liquor between my teeth
as I slur your name. I whirl in wild circles
and stamp on the memory of you.

​

Bio: Heather Johnson (a.k.a. Heather Johnson Lapahie) is an indigenous writer from the Navajo Nation who teaches at the University of New Mexico and reads for the Blue Mesa Review. Her work has appeared in the Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle. She’s currently working on a novel and book of poetry. She’s a mother, an avid Netflixer, and pug owner.

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