from Birthmark
Beneath a jacaranda, I leave
my abandoned items on the sidewalk,
and in only hours, my mistakes
are absorbed by the city.
Tonight, with the objects gone,
I try to think of my regrets
with tenderness, handling them
the way someone who loves me
might touch an old scar.
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L. A. Johnson is the author of Lost Music, forthcoming in 2027 from Milkweed Editions, and an Associate Editor of Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems of Larry Levis (Graywolf Press, 2026). She holds a PhD from University of Southern California, where through academic years 2023-25 she was a Mellon Humanities and University of the Future Postdoctoral Fellow. The winner of the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, the Greensboro Review Poetry Prize, and the Arts & Letters Rumi Poetry Prize, her poems appear in The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is currently a Hughes Fellow at SMU. Find her online at http://www.la-johnson.com
my abandoned items on the sidewalk,
and in only hours, my mistakes
are absorbed by the city.
Tonight, with the objects gone,
I try to think of my regrets
with tenderness, handling them
the way someone who loves me
might touch an old scar.
︎Add “from Birthmark” to cart
L. A. Johnson is the author of Lost Music, forthcoming in 2027 from Milkweed Editions, and an Associate Editor of Swirl & Vortex: Collected Poems of Larry Levis (Graywolf Press, 2026). She holds a PhD from University of Southern California, where through academic years 2023-25 she was a Mellon Humanities and University of the Future Postdoctoral Fellow. The winner of the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, the Greensboro Review Poetry Prize, and the Arts & Letters Rumi Poetry Prize, her poems appear in The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is currently a Hughes Fellow at SMU. Find her online at http://www.la-johnson.com
