After the Ark by Luke Johnson

[This poem appears in Johnson's newly released debut collection of poetry, After the Ark, published by New York Quarterly Press.]


"Corn Snake as Compass" originally appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Beloit Poetry Journal.

Back to that concept of the "Catholic" poet. Now, I know that Johnson's coming from the Episcopalian tradition, which has its own rich, particular representation of the faith. But even if I didn't know that, I read "Corn Snake as Compass" through a sort-of Catholic filter. Perhaps it's through a lowercase "C". I think--in the Flannery O'Connor sense--that the Catholic writer encounters the world with awe, and that finely crafted poetry is sometimes the best tool possible to enable others to experience that awe, that moment.

So "Corn Snake as Compass" is no dogmatic piece; in fact, I'd venture that the vast--vast!--majority of readers wouldn't think of God, or anything related, when reading and enjoying. But there's a care here with the words, an appreciation of the world observed, that speaks to a Catholic aesthetic.

Regardless of its origin, the poem is a fine example of control and craft. It's an arrangement of 9 sentences, parceled out with 8 compact phrasings, and one longer sentence that stretches across the final lines. The poem's ultimate strength is in the clarity and form of its imagery. The "elements" of the poem are simple: (an "overgrown" and "out of place" shrimp) boat, snake, water. But Johnson moves carefully and slowly; the first lines locate the boat, the bog, leading toward these lines:

Disembodied headlights
flicker through marsh grass like lanterns.
A corn snake, shedding, uncoils in the hull.

That's the only simile in the poem, and it's a perfect one. And the snake--smart to begin with that phrase, then tuck "shedding" between. Notice the usage of "l" in this stanza--numbered as it is, it remains a light consonant.

Wind "snaps" a tree onto the boat, leaving "the skeleton picked raw," but not before this snake might

trawl the tall stuff
away from this forgotten wood sinking, this shell.

I like the possibility of this poem--the lack of the concrete, the potential for survival; I like the absence of humans (save for the "hum" of traffic), and, most of all, the gently-placed metaphor of boat/shell/skin. This is wonderful writing. And from a first book? Quite rare and impressive.