TEXT poetry

Heather Taylor Johnson

The shame of eating over the keyboard.
The smudge I left when I peeled off a sticker.
The opened mail next to the screen.
The hum I forget is there.
Words budding, the backspace
the bright blue and brighter white.
The whiskey sour and the blue lighter.
The messaging, the messaging, the distance
we cross, the breadth of our lives, the blood
of my poetry dormant inside.
The fear of hackers and global warming.
The telephone. The teenager.
The reality TV, nightly.
The cursor. 

Heather Taylor Johnson is a poetry editor for Wet Ink magazine and the author of two poetry collections, her most recent being Letters to my Lover from a Small Mountain Town. She reviews poetry and fiction for various literary journals in America and in Australia. She received a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide.