Peter Bogart Johnson
Decadian hangover in a remembered parking space
It’s okay if we fight as long as we leave the fight together
predictably in a post attempted social hour mid early
American terrorism paranoia
Once I started I didn’t realize how awful I’d look
half underwater
night coming on the walls
and we’re still on the couch
every decade feels like the last decade
the first few years of it
Evolution of thinking
Remember when you
talked to me all through
my shower and then
explained yourself?
no one really knows
what they’re doing
small changes in policy
create large blobs of cold
in the North Atlantic
and fewer targeted killings
outside the designated
conflict area that’s drawn
by someone not there
all this could happen
in an afternoon
at the end of a decade
of small maneuvers
remember when a hundred
was as large as the ocean?
the physics of water is such
that movement comes
from displacement of what’s
in front of what’s moving
less pushing as filling
a cavity that never really opens
growing heavy and allowing space
for something with less of itself
the reality of ceasefires
is that both sides try to inflict
as much hurt as possible
to run down the clock
the other side living
under a truth that
it is the other side
Culmination freight train
In this intervening hour I look
for the optimal resizing of virtual space
and you imagine endless futures
my thoughts on consideration come
from ya sci fi and the honor systems
of made up interplanetary beings
all I want is more of the earliest morning hour
where the stream has just started
I can take scissors to any number of
images to make something - maybe
not better but mine / ours
low hum of mechanicals doing weird shit
the bubble protecting us slowly
diminishing but not yet gone
Peter Bogart Johnson’s work has appeared recently in Prelude, The Atlas Review, No,Dear, So and So, and The Big Bell. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two dogs - one looks like a horse, the other like a deer.