As for me, I was born in the Hudson Valley, where I grew up (there and in NYC), went to college in Ohio, grad school in Chicago, and took up the life of an itinerent teacher/writer, spending a number of years overseas (four in Puerto Rico, seven in Europe, five in Japan), then coming back to beat my brains out teaching adjunct in the Baltimore/ Washington area. I've got four books of poems (all New Rivers Press), and lots of unpublished stuff.

Blonde Dying

By midnight,
the planet is full.
The band plays marching tunes,
and the blonde has made
enough friends to keep her active for several
months. By three, the Bierstube
is overflowing with hearty eaters,
who spill out onto the Interstate, drunk
and happy, heavy with food. By six,
the place has been cleaned up, blood
washed away, blonde tucked away in her orbit,
this time for good.

The Terror Debris

At 26, she's magical, one
of the phenoms who
bubble up every few years on the solidwaste disposal scene.
If you took an aerial view of New York
or even of Baltimore, you'd not
even notice her, but her name's right
there, up at the top of the charts
nonetheless, with some of your favorite
landfill and toxic waste dump operatives.
A specialist in compacting and incin-
eration, she reveals the true nature of these
processes. And you haven't seen anything
until you've seen her unload
a dump truck full of your old Eric Clapton,
Arrested Development, and Tony Bennett
LPs.

Brown Devotion

The day I had expected
arrived, romantic
and fierce. Good criminals were
everywhere, acting out,
acting up.
Polarities, charming
and civilized to
the max, were not enough
to prevent the gold
light of evening.
The gilded
heads of intelligent
pedestrians, not
enough to send
us into paroxysms
of indolence.
The more we watched
the more we failed
to see. Even now
that stores open
early, close
late in the evening
if ever.

Halvard (Hal) Johnson