Sonja Johanson
Wendell Gilley
I must have been born
with a jackknife close by
and the stick of pitch grains
on my cradle.
I never go out
on the water but
I set up a fine
rig of toller.
With a carpenter’s handplane,
reamers and gouges, I coax
yellowlegs, pintails
and curlew.
When the sky colors zinc
and snow starts to spit,
goldeneyes drop to
my decoys.
In my sleep I see godwits,
my fingers untangling
their wings
trapped in the basswood.
Sonja Johanson has recent work appearing in the Belleview Literary Journal, the Cincinnati Review, and American Life in Poetry. Her most recent chapbook is Trees in Our Dooryards (Redbird Chapbooks). Sonja divides her time between work in Massachusetts and her home in the mountains of western Maine. You can follow her work at www.sonjajohanson.net.
Return to January 2020 Edition
I must have been born
with a jackknife close by
and the stick of pitch grains
on my cradle.
I never go out
on the water but
I set up a fine
rig of toller.
With a carpenter’s handplane,
reamers and gouges, I coax
yellowlegs, pintails
and curlew.
When the sky colors zinc
and snow starts to spit,
goldeneyes drop to
my decoys.
In my sleep I see godwits,
my fingers untangling
their wings
trapped in the basswood.
Sonja Johanson has recent work appearing in the Belleview Literary Journal, the Cincinnati Review, and American Life in Poetry. Her most recent chapbook is Trees in Our Dooryards (Redbird Chapbooks). Sonja divides her time between work in Massachusetts and her home in the mountains of western Maine. You can follow her work at www.sonjajohanson.net.
Return to January 2020 Edition