March 2016
I'm a businessman and chronic English major who began writing poetry about ten years ago. Sometimes, I find myself switching back and forth between a spreadsheet and an unfinished poem. My first book of poems, Where Inches Seem Miles, was published by Antrim House at the end of 2013. In 2014, Kirkus Reviews selected it as one of the best books of the year in the Indie category. I've benefited from workshops at the Concord Poetry Center and from the journals which have published my work, including Rattle, Blackbird, and Salamander. My website, joelfjohnson.com, includes a few videos of my readings with images.
Nurse’s Corner
The sounds of his heart monitor lose their music,
descend to the measure of no more than his heart.
The venetian blinds, which opened to a light
so pure he could almost hear it, regress
slat by slat to their gray, blind selves.
The forms of nurses, not yet distinct,
this one Fawn and that one Cheryl, are at least
nurses now, their wings less enormous.
His bedside wife is not his mother.
Before long, he’ll say goodbye to the not-angels,
tune out the last of the not-music and walk
with his still-living not-mother past the nurses’ station.
There will be the parking lot, the elevator,
the traffic beyond, the slow return to a wasting self.
The sounds of his heart monitor lose their music,
descend to the measure of no more than his heart.
The venetian blinds, which opened to a light
so pure he could almost hear it, regress
slat by slat to their gray, blind selves.
The forms of nurses, not yet distinct,
this one Fawn and that one Cheryl, are at least
nurses now, their wings less enormous.
His bedside wife is not his mother.
Before long, he’ll say goodbye to the not-angels,
tune out the last of the not-music and walk
with his still-living not-mother past the nurses’ station.
There will be the parking lot, the elevator,
the traffic beyond, the slow return to a wasting self.
©2016 Joel Johnson