THE UNNAMED GARDEN, BY LUKE JOHNSON

Here is where your daddy 
thread a knife
through the mother deer's belly 
 
and bellowed 
when your fingers found 
 
the fawn 
and pulled it, wilted
from the body's cave, both eyes 
 
puddled and still. 
Where once, on a walk, 
 
when fog had crept
its muddy swill over the flash 
of flood lights, you hid 
 
your face afraid 
the Lord would spit, his right hand 
 
raised to strike. 
You, half-nude, cock 
still throbbing wet, 
 
having joined a woman 
twice your age 
 
and tasted 
where the womb began, its brine 
the beauty of cream, bent
 
like one before a whip
to pay your filthy penance. 
 
You bad boy dumb boy you 
never enough boy, you fed 
the body what it craved 
 
and cowered by the climbing rose 
that choked the wooden trellis. 
 
How dare you. 
 
Didn’t you hear 
the woman weep while wandering 
out to find you,
 
her voice 
like something slick and fraught 
 
sought for someplace 
to drink, a body to wear, begged you 
in from the cold. 
 
You cradled the fawn. 
You offered it back to the snow 
 
and your daddy said here
by which he meant sip, to swallow
the moon’s graffiti.
 

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Luke Johnson lives on the California Coast with his wife and three kids. His poems can be found or forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Florida Review, Narrative Magazine, Nimrod, Thrush, Valparaiso Review, Tinderbox, Cortland Review, Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize and his chapbook, :boys, was published by Blue Horse Press in 2019.