National Poetry Month: Twenty-Seven Objects of Explicit Wonder

L.A. Johnson

To celebrate National Poetry Month, we’ll be sharing a poem a week from our archives. The following poem, “Twenty-Seven Objects of Explicit Wonder” by L.A. Johnson, is from the Golden State Bundle‘s Los Angeles Issue. You can read more poetry by L.A. Johnson in the issue itself, which is currently available as part of our Golden State Bundle.

1. house with lawn gone yellow

2. no matter which direction, the wind

3. swimming pools and dreams of pools

4. coyotes that shriek like children

5. naked intruders

6. scent of honeysuckle through a sunroof

7. dish, broken, never thrown away

8. half-lidded sentences that ramble on

9. swimsuits drying on balconies

10. water even a seahorse would swim in

11. the clear circles a hawk makes in the air

12. reservoir, with a lover’s name

13. confessions heard over the ocean’s waves

14. two eggs cracked, each with two yokes

15. fingerprints on mirrors

16. fire danger warning: code red

17. the type of daylight when tarantulas weep

18. oranges peeled over kitchen sinks

19. blue bowls on a porch collecting rainwater

20. flock of green parrots, chattering

21. ice melting in plastic grocery bags

22. laughter in the river lined with concrete

23. sunset, somewhere

24. red lights on mountaintops that blink off and on

25. the splash of water after a dive

26. radios floating music

27. letters, bent from folding

L.A. Johnson is a Provost Fellow in the PhD in Creative Writing & Literature program at University of Southern California. Her most recent chapbook is Little Climates (Bull City Press).

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