edith – The 22 Magazine

Edith, in this nursing home

blinded with macular degeneration,

I come to you with your blurry

eyes, crystal sharp mind,

your countenance of grace

as yesterday’s winds.

I have chosen to consume you

and take you away.

“Oh, where did Jesus disappear

to,” she murmured,

over and over again,

in a low voice

dripping words

like a leaking faucet:

“Oh, there He is, my

Angel of the coming.”

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet, freelance writer and small business owner of custom imprinted promotional products and apparel, from Itasca, Illinois. He is heavily influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Allen Ginsberg. His new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available at Lulu. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at here.

Snakes, a Big Apple and the Garden (of Eden) State
Tuesday, May 10 at 7pm
Proteus Gowanus
MAP

Photo by Sarah Brigden {http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahb365/}

Join us for a multimedia tour of the decadence and divinity of two New Jersey Utopian communities founded in the 19th century: one for pleasure, the other for purity.
Edith Gonzalez presents two faces of the utopian mind of the 19th century: Ocean Grove, which remains to this day a “religious resort”, while Asbury Park, a secular pleasure zone, has faced more worldly ups and downs. Since their respective founding side by side on the NJ coast, these two communities have been engaged in a dynamic dialogue of morality.

Edith Gonzalez is an historical anthropologist specializing in nineteenth-century systems of power, and a native New Yorker with a deep and abiding love for New Jersey.