by Brian Johnson
Of Inorganic Love
The surroundings are what drive you away, and redact you.
You can’t bear the houseplants, all fecund, all secretive,
A house that feels in too many rooms
Like a forest, a grove-grave, and must turn itself
To a house alone. You need calm, a layer
Free of all growing presences, free of terms,
Free of rot and conditions. In their place, in yours,
A cube—a pale cube—glowing outright,
Nothing in it, not even a chair.
Such a cube would be such a kingdom.
Author Brian Johnson is the author of Self-Portrait, a chapbook; Torch Lake and Other Poems, a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award, and Site Visits, a collaborative work with the German painter Burghard Müller-Dannhausen. He directs the first-year writing program at Southern Connecticut State University and teaches composition, poetry, and rhetoric.
Artist Matthew Fertel is a Sacramento-based abstract photographer who seeks out beauty in the mundane. His work focuses on the shapes, textures, and colors of his subjects, creating compositions that encourage an implied narrative easily influenced by the viewer and open to multiple interpretations. More of Matthew’s work can be seen on his website and Instagram.
Gulf Stream Magazine 