The Heebie-Jeebies
- Jan 5, 2018
- 2 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
by Peter Johnson
It’s early morning when it arrives.
Uninvited, as usual.
So why so surprised?
Why up so fast like a tripped mouse trap?
And what’s that thunder between his ears that others call thought?
I remember the first time, like finding myself in a huge walk-in clinic where everyone was wearing black leather masks.
I was never the same again, though I won’t tell him that.
Better to pass on the optimism of a young Buddha than this crummy gene.
No reason to hold out one’s arms and pretend to be a crucifix, or act like you’re stuck in an all-night bar with your legs chained to a barstool.
When I was his age my mother said, “Speak to God. He’s always listening.”
But I left that heavy lifting to her.
Because sometimes you need someone to yank up the rope ladder behind you.
That’s what I tell him as I read aloud from the third chapter of My Old-Guy Guide to Falling Apart, appropriately called “How to Ward off Anxiety.”
Mostly useless advice, yet it gives us something to do while killing what’s left of darkness, hoping we might stumble upon the right spell.
Peter Johnson has a new book of prose poems, Old Man Howling at the Moon, from Madhat Press, along with an anthology he is editing called A Cast-Ron Airplane That Actually Flies: Commentaries from 75 Contemporary Poets on Their Prose Poems. His second book of prose poems, Miracles & Mortifications, received the James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poets. It was the first book of prose poems to win that award. He is the founder and editor of The Prose Poem: An International Journal (which he’s planning to resurrect in the fall of 2019). Johnson’s fiction and prose poetry have been published in various magazines, including TriQuarterly, Epoch, APR, Beloit Fiction Journal, Field, Boulevard, Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Colorado Review, Quarterly West, Denver Quarterly, and Ploughshares. His work has received creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rhode Island Council on the Arts, along with a “Best Book of 2012” citation by Kirkus Reviews.
