Penny Johnson: LOCKDOWN • Cleaver Magazine

Penny Johnson
LOCKDOWN
Pantoum

Four days until they shamble back to school. Even the lithe dreamers,
penchant for subordinate clause, nominative absolute steel edged and
burly boys who pin each other, thud of flesh to mat in calculation of
atomic drops. Boys combat hand to hand to pry the white O toilet seats in

a penchant for subordinate clauses, their own nominative absolute steeled
as they hurl the toilets’ white O’s and glass stutters and then glass shatters
in atomic drops of the lithe and burly boys, thuds in this un-calculated single
microsecond, the window paused then smashes. Olive cushions, tan imprints

spun hurl of the O white toilets now unseated even as the glass shatters
seats cushions, muscled gluteus medius, tensor fascia, pure testosterone of
a microsecond before the window crashes. Olive cushions, tan imprints as
stitches pop, silencer of semiautomatic torn seams rooty-toot unstitched and

looted seat cushions still bearing imprints of gluteus maximus, tensor fascia,
fistfuls of hot innards tossed and batting fronds settle on twisted metal, graying
stitches pop a silencer of semiautomatic seams unstitched in gasps as
desk-lamp’s lightbulb burns on snapped ribs and this lampshade dents,

fistfuls of hot innards tossed, batting fronds now nest on twisted metal, like
rocks abandoned. In gargled voices, they jigger. Then, Jacky ran. Naked and light,
past stitches semiautomatic, desk-lamp whip-lashed, toilet Os all anchored but
look: Jacky’s running, barefoot crimsoned glass, burning a trail across the snow.

Penny Johnson, an old woman, lives out among the sage and bitterbrush in the high desert of central Washington at the base of a mountain with a horde of animals. Early on, Johnson was a resident of Devereux Manor, graduated from The Evergreen State College, and earned an MFA from Goddard. She worked as a long-haul truck driver, a TESL teacher in Poland, and a registered nurse. Most recently her poems have been published in the Yakima Herald-Republic, Cirque: A Literary Journal for the North Pacific Rim, The Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal, and Yakima Coffeehouse Poets. She is the winner of the Tom Pier Prize and WA 129, Poets of Washington.