FLAMES WENT OFF IN A PHOTOGRAPH

To Stefani

Time-space
a mirror
time stood only in photograph

birds beat time
music shares last chances
changes begin again
candles hold

The key
to something
strange
shall we forget
yesterday whisper
nothings
to time

because space
will not save
permanence from some damn street you have been
down that street
before

In mirror
shadows when time
stood still
In some damn
photograph
burning

Kira’s
private beach
under Bixby Bridge

A Volkswagen Bug
sunk in the sand

rusts with ocean mist
in someone else’s
hourglass


Juleen Eun Sun Johnson is an interdisciplinary BIPOC writer and artist. Johnson was born in Seoul, South Korea and adopted when she was three. She was taken to Valdez, Alaska where she spent her formative years. Johnson is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Fellowship. She is the recipient of the Cannon Beach Art Association Grant for writing and art. Her art has been shown at different institutions and galleries in the United States. Johnson earned an MFA in Visual Studies from PNCA and an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Johnson’s work has been published in: Poetry Northwest, Seventh Wave, and other journals and anthologies. Her poem won the Zone 3 Press Prize for Poetry. Johnson’s poems have been nominated for the Best of Net. She is the founding editor of Trestle Ties: A Landscape of Emergence.