Luke Johnson

DEADWIND

There must be sea, gunmetal sky. There
must be gulls plucking flesh from beached

seals and carrying carcass to their young. 
A drunk woman stumbling in head-high surf. 

There must be kite string snapping when
the line lets out. A boy’s cry. A mother’s 

sobering concern. A father from a distance
with a cigarette. One hand strangling the neck

of a bottle, the other rested flat on a dog 
with skin disease. There must be a black

umbrella always an umbrella even when
it’s warm an umbrella a feeling like an umbrella

a sadness like sand in the gums. There must
be fallen palms, bark stripped free by homeless. 

Burn barrels. Braided smoke. A fight. A drunk 
woman stumbling in head-high surf. A father 

from a distance with a cigarette. One hand 
strangling a neck. There must be a moon red sickled 

and a wind that deadens, the way breath deadens
when cloaked with ash, so much falling ash. 

And this boy, frightened boy. Charting a route
from here, to someplace in Heaven. 

Luke Johnson lives on the California Coast with his wife and three kids. His poems can be found in Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, Florida Review, Thrush, Cortland Review and elsewhere. He was a Finalist for both the Pablo Neruda Prize and Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Award, and his chapbook :boys released with Blue Horse in 2019.