K. Johnson-Bair
lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she is compiling an anthology on vinyl listening. Her work has appeared in the Yahara Journal and Nerve House. She likes poetry, short stories, slow travel, and Rock’n’roll.

5a 2010

somewhere in Chelsea
a trio of singing bowls are singing our song

five flights up every night
waking up with the light of Isis
in Velma’s tenement flat

eating cantaloupe and almonds off the cutting board
meeting the poets at Nightingale Lounge under a full moon
and contemplating the urban intelligence

Frankincense fills the air near 4b
on the wing of someone’s sacred Sunday Morning

Dizzy Gillespie-Duke Ellington-Miles Davis- Jimi
Hendrix and Charles Parker Place

revolving the universal
and the oneness of what is New York City

Pluto

It’s all in the turning
Taking me light years away

Like magnetic tape that refuses to pick up sound
Or the laser that no longer reads code on a disc

I will miss this

Representation of an ideal

Galactic noise

                       Personal

                                              Planet

                                                                     Profound transformation

The Last Frontier

Drinking Sunset Sliders out West on the last frontier
Talking to your mortician friend under the glow of fireworks
It’s the 4th of July and all the roads have been tarred and graveled just for the occasion

Even in 100-degree heat
This could be the greenest year on record
He says that the cigarettes and the drinking are the least of his worries
—this is a good year

The mosquitoes are thick; I think about West Nile Virus
And the discipline one must have to live with a fully-stocked bar

We talk about the lighthouses in Duluth, the receding waters of Lake Superior
and how the Sunset Slider got its name.