Jane McPhetres-Johnson
WATCHING THINGS UNFOLD
Folding laundry, napkins, whooping cranes
saving paper bags in slow folded meditation
fold a poem in pleats from its top to be told
where thinking ends and poetry unfolds.
Fold as shelter to bring sheep, hollow among
hills, place where we belong. See rivers ribbon
fold on fold. So lava flowed, now stone is cold
in hardened folds. Doeskin, thin, so softly folds.
Fold diapers to fit babies folded to fit wombs
cribs, laps, arms enfold. In red, black, rusty gold
behold big unearthed earthen pots to hold old
bones in fetal folds, along with stories long untold.
Daily the world’s worst fears unfold. Protections
fold. Farms, schools, clinics fold. Dreamers fold
in pray-er mode in airless packed conveyor holds.
Copy-catenated crimes we scold in centerfolds.
Our dreams fooled, our nightmares foaled, our
demons we had hidden in deep mental folds, now
faceless identical dolls unfold so paper-thin, so
folioed, they hold each other’s tiny hands in folds.
Jane McPhetres Johnson was born, raised, and educated on the eastern slope of the Colorado Rockies, migrated north to the Wyoming Big Horns, and recently landed on the eastern side of the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts. She completed the Goddard MFA under the care of Stephen Dobyns and Thomas Lux the same week her younger son was born, named him Ben Jo(h)nson, then dreamed up programming for public libraries until she finally got arrested at the George W. Bush White House and quit her library work to look for a more effective, affective voice. Always she has practiced the 3 Rs––Reading, wRiting, and Revision–– but seldom has taken the next alphabetical leap to Submission. Recently, however, her poems are venturing out to become verbal expressions of the Munch-kin “Scream” in the face of militarism, exploitation, and the sad insanity of corporate lemmingism. Her poem “Growing up beside the Continental Divide” was first published on Indolent Book’s series What Rough Beast, March 4, 2017, and then went to Washington in the “Not My Prez” anthology.
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