We are continuously drifting apart. It can’t be helped. When we come together our edges seem to fit, but there’s always a space between, even when it can’t be seen. Here, the evidence is clear: the river of black sand where the stones have worn down – volcanic rocks rising on each side of the rift, jagged grooves a laceration. Wound. What we say or don’t say – raising our voices over the lava-scarred plane. There are no trees to stand in the way, no throng of bush or cloud to bloc

Deacon Nkosi, a member of the church, told the newspaper, “The pastor taught us about faith on Sunday last week.” Crocodiles can’t survive in the sewer no matter what your grandmother says as she phones from Florida where the rain has flooded even the first floor of her fantasy retirement village lifestyle rec- reation room pool court shuffle off to Buffalo board & your mistake was that you lacked a boat to focus on as you stepped out onto the surface which you thought had ha

We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing about the world: her arms, the black and white flowers, heavenly bodies in the sky. This is my brief history of happiness: someone loved me once, though my body was already learning the grave – the flesh, the stench of my mouth in the morning when I spoke of the so-called fixed stars attest to this. In the photo leaning, I’m falling, the gravity of the situation impossible to measure, the lace of her dress barely brushing

I have bought 5 yoke of oxen to mow the unruly hair of the dead body out back where the vultures gather: leaves from last year’s disappointment, the stumps that refuse digging and flogging and all other forms of affection. If I put my arms around the tallest oak and kiss the dark root, eat the splinter bark that splits the tongue. If I lay down in the field and turn my eye to branch and sky. Oh taste and see that the tree is good and lives deeper beneath than ab

When the music started everyone knew what to do but me, at the edge of the crowd my half-shuffle wanting   to raise my hands in the air like I just didn’t care about the next big thing, the emails and texts, those   miracle machines they say Jesus doesn’t need. When he came down from the balcony everyone could see   his white teeth and billowing hair, the disco pants, his boots against the stair, and the song changed   ah-ah-ah-ah stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive

In Basic Disaster Supplies Kit, her second collection, Marci Rae Johnson explores love, parenthood, and the Christian life in the context of life on-line, reveling in the Internet’s speed, distortion, and telescoping of time and space. Her poems absorb and transform distant galaxies, potential catastrophes, world clocks, crowds at rock concerts, and, in one case, an image gone viral on the Internet. It makes a big difference, of course, when your powers are magnified a thousand-fold. No more so

Marci Rae Johnson teaches English at Valparaiso University. She is also the Poetry Editor for WordFarm press and The Cresset. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Redivider, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Louisville Review, Rock & Sling, The Other Journal, Relief, The Christian Century, and 32 Poems, among others. Her first collection of poetry won the Powder Horn Prize and was published by Sage Hill Press this year. Her poem, "Mr. Rogers Is Flipping You Off," appeared in Issue Fifty-Three

Is heaven in the sky? the snow. Ashes on the face. Gone to the church to pray. or with the ability to fly. shading the eyes looking up. how they hold up the sky. How words draw the eye down to the page. Down the page. And which direction the thought? Marci Rae Johnson holds an MFA in Poetry Writing from Spalding University, and an MA in Theological Studies from Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL). She currently teaches at Valparaiso University, and she is Poetry Editor for WordFarm Press. Her

though this winter may never end, the snow with its patches of stiff, brown grass 7 starlings at the feeder they are just passing through like you, always 3 exits away from the place where your heart will stop & stay— you think maybe under the ground the sound of ash, the heft the way your father left & his before all that unfinished business you’re determined not to have. The book in my hand says I only need to look around to see— stay in this small space, though my window r

Even though Vachel Lindsay drank lye and died in this room we make out for a few minutes when the tour guide leaves. It’s sad, but there’s a bed and we’re high on poetry and the hour long drive, your hand resting on my thigh. I close my eyes and see Lindsay’s visions of Old Testament prophets, his delusions and his fears, feel your body angled onto mine like it was last night in the heat and dark. The earth’s moving, though not the way it did on Feb. 28, 131 km. south