Selvage

by Donna Johnson

Threaded with the colors and textures of the small-town South, this startling first collection by Donna Johnson opens up a world of unwashed secrets and messy truths, the sometimes unflattering iterations of "self" that emerge as a lifetime unspools. Through voices both imagined and real--"part cottonmouth; the other part, lark"--Johnson peoples this collection with debutantes, bigots, and busybodies, comprising a whole both shameless but often hidden, like selvage itself, "dense as nuclei / a dot for each color of the cloth / visible only if rent."

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2013

Reviews

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because it was a dollar and because the first poem I turned to was called "Bell's Palsy." I am a poor medical student. But I was happy to stumble across this rather lovely and unassuming book. Most of the poems fall neatly into categories of nostalgia for home, romantic resentment, and considerations of death. Despite the clouds hanging over most of these poems, there are still promises of light when, "before it is bare, the gingko/will perfect the color yellow."

Two notables:

The Summer You Told Me I Was Beautiful

I must have believed you, because at the store
I passed over the chaste racers and maillots
and let my hand skim the bikini aisle's limes
and corals like an unmoored skiff on a bay.
And when I stepped out from behind
the white slatted doors, you told me you loved
the slope of my belly from navel to pelvis,
the mole marking the narrows of my waist,
how the suit's bright triangles seemed to float
over my small breasts like flags on a still day.
Such a long time since I'd been with a man
who was willing to overlook the obvious.
I should have known if you would lie about this
you would about other things.

---

The Plot in North Village

Trees live comfortably among their dead.
Staunch elm and maple sapling stand
next to the fallen, bark
scalloped with fungus.

Last week, the neighbor's male foaled--
her colt starved in a day. Yet she stamped
and broke for us when we tried
to take him away.

In Lancaster, you lie under a stone
dated with a single year. My son,
will we reunite here, in this darker,

infinite womb:
hair slack as rain, fingers curled,
brains two harps strummed then quiet,
eyes neither seeing nor blind?

[Ellen Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of poems. I enjoyed the diversity and range of the authors emotions and experiences.