ROXANE BETH JOHNSON

Solo on Nudity

I want to be nude, don’t you? Not just my body but my soul—that boxcar full of melon, wine and gospel fire. I’m never here, always wishing for home. Always my kitchen’s celery smell and the bed’s rickety syrup. Always that house loving me in its fallopian rooms. Such brittle tenderness only bare feet on cold floors know. Eckhart said, the greater the nudity, the greater the union. A nude soul is best—its rusty wheels bare like shins. Always they go down through the blue earth, rise up with weeds.