Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Peter Bogart Johnson

Victorville

A desert ridge over a red roof inn.    Day old typewriter, dried up orange juice.    Bob's Big Boy, a thermometer.    A clean, clean street.    A backyard that goes and goes.    Irrigation ditch.    A tree out of nowhere.    A car park and a light bulb store.    Street racing and low cloud cover.    A jet test.    A water park.   Snakebites.    Lovingly held walkmans.    Lovingly stroked velour.   Foreign smog.   A road to your house, a road over the hill.    Long dips in the pool.    Long dips between bulwarks and Yucca.    A decent price for electricity.   Air conditioning before lunch in the yard.    Aluminum and stucco over the pool.    A bright light, no tunnel.    An onramp.    A concrete divider.   An onramp.    Action movies, 32 oz's.    A dusty sidewalk.    It's dry heat, anyway.    A subcontract for garbage disposal.    A neon nameplate.


Peter Bogart Johnson currently works as a grant-writer for a New York City non-profit, and also co-edits the journal LIT. He holds an MFA from The New School, and his work has appeared in I do this, I do that and in the chapbook anthology Earshot: the First Offenders. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife.