your body
TRANSCRIPT
University of Northern Iowa
Your BodyAuthor(s): Linnea JohnsonSource: The North American Review, Vol. 290, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2005), p. 52Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127319 .
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N A R
LINNEA JOHNSON
Your Body
Between your legs: Vivaldi?listen.
Too: plum. Shell. Silk. Your breasts
pottery gourds smoothed by use
covered in white velvet; clitoris
a pomegranate kernel sucked to ripening.
Your hands are weather, bird wings.
Approaching you, your hands mean
something. Fine head.
Your brain is everywhere, like skin. Violet
gold-leaf eyelids. Garlic bulb knees.
Your back is a river
pebbled down the middle
where the current is fastest, electric. Your
feet are silk?brown and ivory as antelope;
nails, chips of moonlight, Chinese inlay,
your bones long and sweet as sugar cane. Fingers
and toes are dance, pentameter, time;
neck, the bridge in a Japanese garden.
Shoulders are ebony piano, will, reverie, sagebrush, tendon, and tendency;
how work gets done, why.
Your belly is a clay flowerpot, sweet as sunned pineapple. Eyes:
lighted globes, detailed maps, charts.
Your buttocks are O'Keeffe landscape,
ridge and line changing shape as they flatten to plain and delta. The waves
from between your legs?scent, currents?
from under your arms and breast,
off the scape of your body, are honey,
dream, road, and path toward you.
Your skin is apple peels, scented
geranium, lamb's ear, pearl, lapis,
June cherries. Ears: translucent
avocado slices, tune, the petals
of peach roses, sentience; your face
a toothed orchid, daylily mouth, nippled tongue, memory.
Wide open. A spice garden. You are
complete as seasons.
A thousand years from now your skull
will be a bowl in which water lilies will float,
an oil lamp, the sense of cupped hands
around clear air.
52 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW January-February 2005
This content downloaded from 62.122.73.17 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:35:20 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions