Self-Portrait as Norway Spruce
- Self-Portrait as Norway Spruce
I had been quiet once and for a long time:turned my needles inward with discretion,tolerated both birds and wild radishes.
When they came to possess me with twineand metal, they counted, patiently, each limb.
Thirst overwhelmed me for the first time.They took me horizontal, crushed belts
thick around my spine, forcing my musclesto contract without labor. Veins crosshatchedmy monstrous body. The perfect disks
of my sapwood became exposed, revealinga life that is only one half of eternity.
I never had a mother or a child—nothing to bind me to the earth but myself.
And now that I’ve become too thin to stand,bring me to the knives, hold me uplike an offering, and call it a burial. [End Page 124]
la Johnson’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Antioch Review, The Iowa Review, and Indiana Review. She is pursuing her PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California, where she is a Provost’s Fellow.
