Junk Drawer

The shortest way to a man’s stomach is through 
his esophagus, so that puzzle’s been solved. 
Still mysteries remain, our lives with their tiny
twists of plot. The jury is in; the jury is out.

Birds with hollow bones swallow miles of open
ocean following a perfectly folded map in
their heads while we look on, hair in our eyes,
cataloging vagaries of plumage and demeanor.  

There is no map of how our minds arrive at
a certain thought, sorting through the jigsaw
pieces stored, every kitchen with its junk drawer,
details lost, some restored. Nor a catalog of

ancestors lost or ignored. Historians don’t 
record bread kneaders, wood splitters, sock
darners, or the minding of kids. My grandmother
was a staircase who knew the shortest distance

between two lines was getting straight to the point
and the shortest way home the most familiar.
Stairs have heads and feet, but it’s us who do 
the climbing to peer at the next ridge. Or bridge,

leaning over, slashing the water with a lure.
We all want to reel something in. The fly is fake
but the impulse is real. Like vultures riding
thermals, we circle, patient for a speeding car

to do its trick. But there is no trick. Or it’s all 
trick. Is that blinking light in the window signaling
hunger or fatigue? Magnifying glasses only stretch
the ink. We are still miles away from knowing.

How Thinking Of Islands Islands Our Thinking

I thought when I chose this island that the island
was choosing me. I thought walking around it
meant it was something you could walk around
and therefore whole. I thought we like islands

because they seem entire, of a piece. Where else
do you return where you first began with the ocean
always at your side? I thought you would always
be at my side, at least the part of you inside my mind

which is another island I walk around returning
to the cliff where you point to gannets only you
can see. I thought how one never really leaves
an island because there’s always more island to leave. 

I thought how thoughts sometimes create their own
islands by returning us to places of our past that
no longer exist; the past just a story we tell about
tides that keep shifting. Winds that rain even when

there is no wind. I thought how some questions
are best left unanswered and how some answers
are hard as stones and that islands are just big stones
we grapple with until they lodge in our bones.

Susan Johnson has her MFA and PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches writing in the Isenberg School of Management. Her poems have recently appeared in Rhino, Freshwater, Comstock Review, Oyez Review, Pinyon, THEODATE, Bluestem,and Karamu. Her chapbook Impossible is Nothing was published by Finishing Line Press.