Inheritance
We drank hard water.
Spoke in plain language.
Said what we didn't
with a joke or a look.
One went missing—
let silence drill its hole.
A second fell ill.
We cloaked our mirrors.
Slashed a red X
on the door to our house.
Pass over us, I asked
the raven sky,
or burn in me
a second mouth.
From How To Catch a Falling Knife by Daniel Johnson. Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Johnson. Used by permission of Alice James. All rights reserved.
Daniel Johnson
Daniel Johnson published How to Catch a Falling Knife, winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award, in 2010 with Alice James Books. In connection with the book’s release, Johnson performed an illuminated version of the text involving poetry, original music, and the found home movies of William Bradley, a World War II-era Fuller Brush salesman from Davenport, Iowa.