Criterion of Truth
by John Johnson
Alone in the reference room, we take another look at the record. Who doesn’t like a good mystery. Bills of credit, bills of lading. Erasures that leave a mark. A suspect sets himself up, then dashes off. Disconnects the dots. He takes a touch of rain with him. Yellow iris. Almanac.
Blame it on speech balloons skewed to the extreme, although if I’m reading this right the planet sheds its past under pressure, for example near the mouths of thermal vents where giant tube worms and eyeless shrimp bear witness, which is another way of saying.
John’s poems have appeared most recently in The Collidescope, Hidden Peak Press, The Prose Poem, Right Hand Pointing, and Sublunary Review. He is the author of Toss Repeat, winner of the 2024 James Tate Prize (to be published by SurVision Books in 2025), and co-translator, with Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales, of Plagios/Plagiarisms, the poetry of Ulalume González de León, winner of the 2021 Northern California Book Award for poetry in translation.