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  • Good Morning, Midnight, and: In a Mirror Universe, and: A Face Made of Light, and: Irradiance
  • L. A. Johnson (bio)

Good Morning, Midnight

I tune my telescope toward the sky,searching the cosmos for what I wantto find: safety in empty spaces,

planets lighter than snow, one less thouto miss. In my fixed experiment,

there wasn't ever one—no messagesof uncertainty thickeningin a doctor's vials, life unspooling.

The law of reflection says onlywhat you can see is what can see you.

Mirrors create multitudes, transform aurorasinto thousand of echoes, ringing.Even then, there are losses,

the trapped light of a galaxyburied behind our apology-lit sky.

In this map of no distance,I trace the anatomy of prisms,latitude vanishing by the hour—

an evolution of a never-will-becollapsing between stars. [End Page 31]

If a mirror vanishes, if a bodyvanishes, so does its reflection,so does celestial possibility.

Heat repairs in the crematorium.Light completes the feeling.

I dream a midnight madefrom arrows and ghost words,mirror world with a different name.

In a Mirror Universe

Devotion is what's containedin a snowglobe or measuredby the evidence of phone calls.Winter spans landscapeswith voices, birdsongs echotinny and indistinguishablein the cold. Frozen in midnight,identical snowflakes soften,twin flowers that violatenot one hypothesis. I lingerin the stillness of the peninsula,watch ice catch in pine trees.Supernovas reduce as ifphosphorescent bedroom stars.Counted by moonlight, the ordinarymoments: liquid medicinetapered to the size of a spoon,chalk pills sized too largefor swallowing. If physics doesnot dictate that time must moveonly forward, how do we know [End Page 32] about then or the now, waking upnot knowing where I am.Years ago, I cut your fingernailsdelicately, so as to not harmthe quick. Pulled the sheets up tight.Folded the linen dresses, leftthe oven on. Your houseperformed a vanishing actin slow movements, withoutbother for repairs. In this life,great unpreparedness. Whydid I call so late, why did the yardfill with moths, why did frost thickenon the windshield even thoughit hadn't been cold at all. Memoryunraveled, memory reflected,let the forever be tonight.

A Face Made of Light

I see you there, under the traveler's palm,face shielded by the rows of stiff fans, rainwaterpooling across the east-west compass line.

I see you twisted among curtains, reflectedin the mirror into the space beside me.

Later, you are singing behind the iron gate,your song the sound of cicadas in late summer.

In the swimming pool, as I kick from one endto the other, you are beneath me: your eyes more wet [End Page 33]

than the water. The fluid that suffocated youweighs you down like an anchor, pressing youback into the sharp-bottom of the pool.

Your mouth opens to gibberish. Your voicelost to so many air bubbles breaking

and breaking. You become a white diagrammade of holes, radiating daylight, moonlight,

every hour of borrowed time before you werereduced to shadow. Memory changes shape.

You are: what is present, what is absent.

Irradiance

Your body in ruins, wrappedin an electric blanket. Radiographs

reveal blood in place of air.Each breath a precipice.

Each breath a theoryof glass breaking in a field.

Your cell phone on the bedone last blue ship to elsewhere,

while past cities drift into languagein the last hour of the night:

the white Point Reyes lighthouse,lantern room sootless and pristine— [End Page 34]

how far we are from those shipsavoiding the rocky danger of coastline.

You've felt the weight of candlelight,the absence. What to miss

of what gets cut out, replacedwith a landscape of sutures.

Meanwhile, your mind bright asthe moonlight outside, but trapped

behind glass. I measure the light-yearsbetween this strange planet and the next,

here and not-here. Quasars disappearas they become regular galaxies.

At midnight, I hold back my own breath.Water enters your body, cold...

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