Bless the Mouth
Bless the mouth
that saunters, silk of spit.
Bless the hand
that holds the head
& bobs it back & forth.
Bless the build the bridge
the white noise whittled
from the body’s blazed tremolo.
Bless the gaze,
slap of skin, spilled wine.
Bless the wine, the bite,
the tang, sticky pleather.
Bless the pleather.
Bless this humid coming-&-going.
To contort a tongue
to the rhythm of rapture, a rowboat
swept in a flood—
Luke Johnson lives on the California Coast with his wife and three kids. His poems can be found at Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, Florida Review, Nimrod, Thrush, Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Pablo Neruda and Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Awards, and his chapbook, :boys, was released by Blue Horse Press in 2019.
