Daniel B. Johnson


DANIEL B. JOHNSON's first book of poetry, How to Catch a Falling Knife, will be published by Alice James Books in May 2010. Johnson runs the Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute by day and drums with the band Truck Stop Sex Toys by night.  In conjunction with the release of his book, he will be performing an illuminated version of his poems involving live music and the found home movies of William Bradley, a World War II-era Fuller brush salesman from Davenport, Iowa. His poems have been featured in the Best American Poetry 2007, Iowa Review, the anthology I Have My Own Song for It: Modern Poems of Ohio, and elsewhere. More of his work can be found at www.danielbjohnson.com.




Lightweight Champion of the World


Same year I asked my dad for boxing gloves,
Boom Boom Mancini killed a man
with his hands. A Korean boxer in yellow trunks,
who went down twice in the twelfth
and didn’t get up. I got the gloves anyway,
ruddy leather mitts weighing a pound a piece.
My best friend Georgie and I could barely
keep our dukes up as we circled each other
in the basement, my mother’s egg timer
ticking away on the ping-pong table.
We’d duck, bob, and duck­­. Boos
rose from the stands and flying beer cups. 
Our jabs fell short. Lazy hooks sailed wide.
Only once did I stand over Georgie
the way I’d imagined.  Blood wormed out
of his nose.  His eyes fluttered shut. 
I raised my gloves above my head
then ran from the house.



Identity Property of One



Naked, asleep, I could have been anyone,
you said, lying in the center of your bed,

smoky, half-drunk, and borne aloft
by a swell of sheets. You went through my pockets

twice– pants, jacket, backpack, and shirt, inside and out,
and counted my money: seventeen bucks. 

Reeking of gin, I could have been anyone.
When you found no ring, no needles, no summons,

no stash, you studied my body by streetlight,
for scars, scabs, tattoos, love-bites, who knows what else.

Naked, asleep, I could have been anyone. 
Sweatered, fidgety, and sipping tea, you sat awake

at the side of your bed, clasped in your palm
you wouldn’t say what.

 

End Scene



What plays on a train car window
but sunspots and silhouettes,

pigeons, statuary, ads, and clouds?
The lives of the dead, I’ve heard,

flickered at night in empty cars,
a cut-rate penny arcade.

When the el train sparks into a turn
a man in a porkpie hat appears

again, on the porch with his wife,
swizzling something-on-the-rocks.

She knits.  Neither talks. 
He raises a pipe to his lips,

the scene cuts off.  Diner lights
glare on the railcar glass. 

Night into night, the dead parade
as if playing to a packed house­­–

twin sisters double dutch, 
a hunter raises a quail. Yesterday’s

newspaper blows around.
Train doors open and close– 

a suicide in a swimsuit
waves from an inner-tube raft.  



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