Sonja Johanson
Giant Hogweed
(Heracleum mantegazzianum)
Catherine, come, burn all the lace you have --
pins stuck on an oat straw pillow, dark red spots,
cartwheel flowering by the bobbin and the bone.
Catherine, bake us cattern cakes,
call us caraway, tell your sons why paper
is the length it is, what the winding scheme.
We’ve been ensnared, enticed, we feast
on wild rhubarb, parsnip, wine,
we live in almhouses, safely out
the pricks and hooks, the tallies of the light.
Sonja Johanson has recent work appearing in Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, and Poet Lore. She is a contributing editor at the Eastern Iowa Review, and the author of Impossible Dovetail (IDES, Silver Birch Press), all those ragged scars (Choose the Sword Press), and 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 July 2018 Edition
(Heracleum mantegazzianum)
Catherine, come, burn all the lace you have --
pins stuck on an oat straw pillow, dark red spots,
cartwheel flowering by the bobbin and the bone.
Catherine, bake us cattern cakes,
call us caraway, tell your sons why paper
is the length it is, what the winding scheme.
We’ve been ensnared, enticed, we feast
on wild rhubarb, parsnip, wine,
we live in almhouses, safely out
the pricks and hooks, the tallies of the light.
Sonja Johanson has recent work appearing in Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, and Poet Lore. She is a contributing editor at the Eastern Iowa Review, and the author of Impossible Dovetail (IDES, Silver Birch Press), all those ragged scars (Choose the Sword Press), and 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 July 2018 Edition