Issue 3.1
Winter 2023
Vanessa Couto Johnson
overtime
If the game be tied
that such knot
on the head knocks
hard doors loose
enough that schools
of new flip onto the bleachers,
then it won’t run
dry. Pulse court.
We lap and clap
for the frog
in our throats we’ve sworn
away from extinction. Worth
-y reme-
dial tone: valid, sound, pond
-er
-er.
Vanessa Couto Johnson (she/they) is the author of the full-length poetry books pH of Au (Parlor Press, Free Verse Editions Series 2022) and Pungent dins concentric (Tolsun Books, 2018), as well as three poetry chapbooks. Most recently, Vanessa's poems have appeared in The Shore, The Broken City, Vagabond City Lit, and Rough Cut, among others.
Vanessa's Book Recommendations
Two books that impacted the manuscript these poems are from would be Matthew A. Cronin's and Jeffrey Loewenstein's The Craft of Creativity and Andrew Elfenbein’s The Gist of Reading.
Reflection
This poem is part of a sequence of poems that responds/thematically feeds off of parts of a quote from an organic chemistry book; in this case, the quote is “The ‘whole,’ however, is much more complex than these individual pieces, since they interact by multiple feedback loops in a manner that makes it impossible to show that each effect has a simple cause.” This poem is the end of the sequence; I wanted it to be reflective, hopeful, but also concerned and seeking to give voice to the voiceless: “We lap and clap/for the frog//in our throats we’ve sworn/away from extinction.” I hope for how I have broken up “ponderer” to give home to the unheard species (“pond”) and give the ribbit (“-er / -er”) sound. The “game” of our environment continues.