For Georgia
After her LA neighborhood ticked
down to evening cool, my grandmother
tended the roses. Holding back the thorns
that grew beneath pale teacup faces,
she pinched the crabgrass from their beds,
then unwound the hose, heeding my grandfather
who shouted, don’t get water on the porch!
After the roses were tucked in bed
she trekked into the back where a cataract
of wild geraniums spilled along the neighbor’s garage.
Leaning into that green tangle,
a catacomb for black widow spiders, she clipped
the blossoms and carried them back to the house.
The petals left a trail of fire in the grass.
On the dark desert of her dining table
she settled the bouquet in a vase
and long after we had eaten, long after roses
drowsed in cool waterbeds of soil,
geraniums burned.
Tina Johnson lives in Star, Idaho, but her writing is heavily influenced by the 39 years she lived in Alaska, both in the Bristol Bay area and in Sitka. She has worked in libraries, at the Daily Sitka Sentinel, Old Harbor Books, and as crew on the Poiken J, her husband’s commercial fishing boat. Nevertheless, she considers writing poetry to be her main gig. Her work has been published in Atlanta Review, Bellingham Review, Inkwell, and Writers in the Attic.
Euphony Journal 