Poetry | June 01, 2009
Poetry Feature: Kimberly Johnson
Kimberly Johnson
Featuring the poems:
- Bravo
- Charlie (featured as Poem of the Week, Aug. 11, 2009)
- Foxtrot
- November
- Tango
- Zulu
Charlie
A new song. A carol, say, to constancy — not the Northstar’s stubborn pivot, boring nightlong through the pole, but the modest steadfastness of the Big Dipper. Draw a line across its basin, star to star and then beyond the constellation till you find, near-invisible, true North. Selfless gesture, at every hour to point and point away to some obscure and ever-fixèd mark, to be prized for pure devotion,for how it bears the gaze away . . . Isn’t that how it is, in love as in war: someone gets to pull the wagon, and someone, girding his smallness in glittering mail, gets to be Charlemagne.
If you are a student, faculty member, or staff member at an institution whose library subscribes to Project Muse, you can read this piece and the full archives of the Missouri Review for free. Check this list to see if your library is a Project Muse subscriber.
Want to read more?
Subscribe TodaySEE THE ISSUE
SUGGESTED CONTENT
Poetry
Oct 07 2026
Perkoff Prize Winner: 5 Poems by CM Berger
Sonnet for Lost Symptoms The morning my pregnancy symptoms stopped, I dreamt I held our long-dead dog, broken in my arms. In place of headstrong cancer, which claimed him piecemeal… read more
Poetry
Oct 07 2026
6 Poems by Morri Creech
The Dissident Above the roofs at dawn, the flags are flying. Downstairs, soiled lives go on in the laundromat. And in newspapers, people keep vaguely dying in ten-point font while… read more
Poetry
Oct 07 2026
6 Poems by Elina Katrin
Post-Traumatic Arthritis Late evenings, when February asphalt whispers the cold afterthought of winter, nobody calls with good news. A year of un- and mis- diagnoses homologize into low MRI hums,… read more