By Kimberly Johnson

Wow, what a dumb universe: I’m the one
Always running after risk, who can’t walk
Past a vertical fancy of sandstone

Without eyeballing a route up, who’ll take
What the stranger offers, scoff the fire code,
Jump out of planes, rev the dirtbike

Past a hundred out on desert washboard roads,
Was me who bought the snake, sweet snuggly pet
For the kid but really because I love to fold

Its girth around my neck and stroll the street,
Half lightheaded and half charmed
To feel it clench its length around my throat,

Was you who kept your distance, so alarmed
At salmonella, as you were at heights,

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Tight spots, stage lights, throngs, germs, and other harms,
Preferring to be imperiled by the night
Sky with its changing moon-moods, and by poems.

I crash around like rashness is my birthright,
Like I want to kiss death daily on the mouth.
Hellbent and headlong my nymphly feet

Stomp around on muddy fate’s doubtful path
Like it’s never going to stomp me back,
Like it’s not coiled down in the undergrowth,

Never going to rattle scales or choke
Around the windpipe in sinuous turns
Or ankle-prick with single venomed strike.

I’m the one holds the firework as it burns.
You’re the one safe as houses. Safe as urns.

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Kimberly Johnson is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Fatal (Persea Books, 2022), as well as book-length translations of Hesiod and Virgil. Recipient of grants and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Utah Arts Council, she has recent work in Best American Poetry 2020 and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series.