Poetry | June 01, 2010
Poetry Feature: Jonathan Johnson
Jonathan Johnson
Featuring the poems:
-
Interiority
-
Longing Is Not Desire
-
I’ve Turned from the Distant
-
In the Year of Gorillas
-
Balloon
-
To Whoever May Care for Me Dying (featured as Poem of the Week, Oct. 19, 2010)
To Whoever May Care for Me Dying
Do what you must.
Swab the raw places
as delicately as you can,
but go on and swab them.
If I wince, I would be clean.
Such work befits those
who can see so little left
between skull and skin
and not think them.
You needn’t imagine
if I say I lived once
on the sea, in the wind
and sun. You’re not yet born,
I hope, so what’s this world?
If there’s nothing for the pain
there’s nothing. Thank you
anyway for the morphine
dripped from the eyedropper
onto my tongue like communion,
for the pink, wet sponge
small on its plastic stick
and dabbed on my lips,
if that’s where we’re at.
Thank you for the clean cotton,
for the comb and buttons
for as long as that was possible.
Step outside when you can
to look at light on things.
From this far I don’t know
what else may be required
but if there’s a rose
somewhere in the room
won’t you bring it to me?
Press its deep, open folds
right up to my nose.
And whatever song you might sing,
please, sing to me.
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