Luke Johnson’s debut poetry collection, Quiver, won several prizes before it was published by Texas Review Press in 2023. Close on the heels of Quiver’s release, Johnson’s second book, Distributary, will be published by the same press in fall 2025. No surprise. Johnson has a lot to say, and his poet-speaker will not be suppressed.
Quiver portrays a dream world, linked to a stark reality, where generational trauma is recognized for what it is, an artifact of mind, a collection of leaping memories that haunt and possess. Not a linear drama per se, for a wound is not what happens, it’s what happens in the mind, and the mind is a mystery. What is profound in Quiver, therefore, is not what is said, but what is not said, a certain emptiness between the lines: an observing presence that allows us to enter the fractures and the healing. Furthermore, there is a tall-tale aspect to the descriptions even as they are grounded in a blue-collar reality, which is how life works: the past cannot be recovered in its essence.
In one of the opening poems, “Numbers 14:18,” a secret is revealed. “I’ve never told you,” he says. A memory emerges from the preverbal; as such, it might not be completely coherent, but it will explain a lot:
I’ve never told you
how my father tied
a drunk man to a chair
and snapped the first four fingers
on his left hand.
How the moon,
a sickle soaked in milk,
hung center the window
cracked from frantic birds
and how the man, his dad,
howled like a stray in the hills
the boys bragged of maiming.
You might be wondering
what happened to the fifth finger
his thumb
and whether it stayed straight
or faced a similar form of fracture.
But none of that matters.
In the time it’d take
to detail a thumb pried loose, I
could move from the shed
to the house
a quarter mile north,
where my nana
swirls thyme in soup
and sways her hips
to Elvis, John Prine.
How can she dance
when the dead crawl inside?
How can she dance
with a body branded,
owned by a beast, a belt
that blooms the tremors?
Believe when I tell you
the fifth was spared.
That my father
ran out of whisky
out of spite,
stopped soothing with brass
sought light
and stepped out
deeply hidden, an animal
crazed for water.
That he found in his search
an oasis,
and there
lapped stars until shame clotted
concealed
spread like mange
that swallowed him.
Sometimes that’s all
that it takes. One taste.
One. For deadwind
to enter and eat
the insides
of a boy of a boy of a boy of a boy
of a boy of a boy of a boy—
Was the moon really “a sickle soaked in milk hanging center the window/
cracked from frantic birds”? Probably not. This is an example of the dramatized quality the book evokes, but the dream-like image properly follows a shocking, anatomical scene that cannot be denied, that, even if not literally true, we feel with a truth of its own. As we can see from the moon image, the memory of the untold event is its own reality. Furthermore, and even more eerie, this horror show, in some way, probably occurred.
Then the next leap: the tortured man is the torturer's father. Johnson cleverly waits to tell us in a passing remark after he has softened us up by evoking the milky moon. The violence continues to layer. The window is cracked by “frantic birds.” The grandfather howls like a dog, maimed by a fresh generation of bragging boys. The human cry is part of a long legacy.
Was anything saved? Was the thumb, the uniquely-Sapien digit, allowed to remain whole? “None of that matters,” says the speaker, who, understandably, seems loath to dwell on the terror. The tale turns to “Nana,” perhaps the speaker’s grandmother: wife of the tortured, mother of the torturer, who “swirls thyme in soup/and sways her hips/to Elvis, John Prine.” We are relieved, yet unnerved, by her joy.
Then another mystery: “How can she dance/when the dead crawl inside?//How can she dance/with a body branded,/owned by a beast, a belt/that blooms the tremors?” The violence described here is unfathomable, and it is “inside.” Inside the house, inside the body. This begs the question: how does anyone live with what crawls inside, especially when it is seemingly impossible to know its extent and meaning? There are hints—a body branded, a body belted, a body trembling—so much space here, despite the vivid language, for the imagination.
Pervasive assault is happening, but what is Nana’s role? Could she be pleased with the sadistic ritual playing out nearby? Does her dancing joy forecast an improvement, an irrepressible happiness she passes on? All we learn is that the all-important thumb is spared. Thus begins the abstract description of a healing where, he “stopped soothing with brass,” where he “found in his search/an oasis,/and there/lapped stars until shame clotted/concealed/spread like mange/and swallowed him” — a grace counter-intuitively linked with shame and disappearance. Like faith the size of a mustard seed, the move toward the light is “all that it takes,” but we sense an uneasy redemption at best.
And so, both the trauma and the healing are generationally passed; “they enter and eat/the insides//of a boy of a boy of a boy of a boy/of a boy of a boy of a boy—.” Still, perhaps the Biblical title’s emphasis shifts from “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation,” and highlights instead “The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression.” The wound and incremental healing have never been so dramatically merged, so rife with deep-mind diction that rises like a suppressed truth, a flashback, and then releases in metaphors that light up the neurons.
One of the final poems in the book, “WTR” describes a narrative scene, where the war-wounded father flips pancakes with his buddies as they listen to “Clapton’s contagious solos.” We imagine this is made possible by WTR regulations, which limit the hours of a worker’s week—a reprieve, a moment of grace. The government has both wounded and provided. Here, a rough peace between father and son is embodied in a gesture:
…He says: Come sit son,
here, by me, my beautiful boy,
moving a wrinkled
stack of Playboys
and a few bottles of Beam.
I rise to my feet
like white trash royalty,
demand they serve me my meal.
There are many such moments of wondrous, albeit uneasy, acceptance in this book braced against moments of hallucinogenic horror. The language is unerringly innovative, lit, and raw. This book takes a hero’s journey into memory, a journey the speaker “demands”—and it is well-worth taking.
Quiver, Luke Johnson, Texas Review Press, October 10, 2023, 105 pages. $21.95
ISBN: 978-1-68003-320-5. Poems used with permission from the author.
This article was first pubished in Vox Pupuli
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