A01=Luke Johnson
american poetry
Author_Luke Johnson
boyhood
Category=DC
Category=DCF
contemporary poetry
epistolary
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
erotic
eroticism
family ghosts
father son relationship
fatherhood
gender roles
generational trauma
gothic
haunting
Luke Johnson
lyric poetry
natural world
nature
poems
poetry
Quiver
shame
Texas Review Press
toxic masculinity
trauma
TRP
TRP: The University Press of SHSU
working class
working class poems
Product details
- ISBN 9781680033205
- Weight: 170g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 31 Oct 2023
- Publisher: Texas Review Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Quiver is a book of reckoning, a book of ghosts, a book of lineal fracture and generational fatherlesness. It’s a visceral guide through boyhood into fatherhood. One that yields witness to trauma, erotic shames, brutalities and toxic masculinity, and in so doing, emerges with a speaker beginning to free himself. Patricia Smith said it best: “Quiver will change the way you see.”
“floodghost”
Mother couldn’t manage
what sated me, so she prayed:
sought in silence
a substance that’d soothe,
something familial with grace.
I groaned. Broke bodies
over blacktop’s pane, a bottom-
less well of blood. At seven
I smothered a frog and fed each leg
to my quivering sister
laughed while she choked out its skin. At twelve,
I pulled a pistol from under
the vacant shed and shoved
its shudder to a schoolboy’s temple, teased
while he wept in his piss.
And yet all along a Psalm, a satchel
of prayer: song. Mother making
contracts with the sky, while I
tore its pages to light a fire, warm
my hands around it. Radiant blue. Red
from a faraway pine.
“floodghost”
Mother couldn’t manage
what sated me, so she prayed:
sought in silence
a substance that’d soothe,
something familial with grace.
I groaned. Broke bodies
over blacktop’s pane, a bottom-
less well of blood. At seven
I smothered a frog and fed each leg
to my quivering sister
laughed while she choked out its skin. At twelve,
I pulled a pistol from under
the vacant shed and shoved
its shudder to a schoolboy’s temple, teased
while he wept in his piss.
And yet all along a Psalm, a satchel
of prayer: song. Mother making
contracts with the sky, while I
tore its pages to light a fire, warm
my hands around it. Radiant blue. Red
from a faraway pine.
Luke Johnson's poems can be found at Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, Florida Review, Frontier, Cortland Review, Nimrod, Thrush, and elsewhere. You can find more of his poetry at lukethepoet.com.
