Jeffrey Johannes
CONTACT:
Email: joanjeff@wctc.net
Address: 800 Verbunker Ave., Port Edwards, WI 54469
BIO:
Vincent Van Gogh said, “I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough what is enough?” Jeffrey Johannes finds these things more than enough in his retirement years: sandhill cranes behind his house in Port Edwards where he lives with his wife Joan, creating art in his studio, writing poetry—each day brings something new! His publications include his poetry collection Ritual for Beginning Again and Happily Ever After, a crown of sonnets by his wife Joan, which he illustrated. His chapbook Coffee Quiet was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. Jeffrey’s poetry and essays have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including Allegro & Adagio: Dance Poems II, Ariel, Bramble, Celestial Musings: Poems Inspired by the Night Sky, The Clearing Folk School 2020 Recollections, English Journal, Isthmus, Lockdown 2020, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Modern Haiku, Moss Piglet, Nimrod, Norbert Blei's Poetry Dispatch, Best of Kindness: Origami Poems Kindness Anthology, Peninsula Pulse, Rosebud, Simil: Lutheran Voices in Poetry, Sheltering with Poems Community & Connection, Sounding: Door County in Poetry, Star*Line, Stoneboat, Wisconsin Academy Review, World Enough Writers Coffee Poems, and the Your Daily Poem website.
His poetry has also appeared in poetry and art collaborations, including Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (UWSP), Verse & Vision (Gallery Q in Stevens Point), Paper to Wall Exhibit in Hayward), and Trace: An Art & Poetry Exhibit (Wausau Center for the Visual Arts) at which he won the First Place Viewer’s Choice Award with artist Zack Nikolai.
Jeffrey has also won contests sponsored by Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, Origami Poems Project, By-Line, Free Verse, Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, and Peninsula Pulse, including the Hal Prize in 2012. He co-edited the 2012 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar and the Winter, 2019 issue of Bramble with his wife Joan. Currently, Jeffrey is creating pometoons, which are cartoons of his more humorous poems, working on a new chapbook, and co-chairing the WFOP Triad Contest.
PUBLICATIONS:
Coffee Quiet, $17, available at Kelsay Books, Amazon, or directly from the poet ($2.50 s&h).
Ritual for Beginning Again (Wild Whoop Press) SOLD OUT
Happily Ever After (Wild Whoop Press) SOLD OUT
POMETOONS:
Persephone, The Sunday School Story Every Boy Would Love to Hear, Nonversation with an English Teacher, Caterwaul, Paws Folded, and What If Mother Goose was in the Canon (Wild Whoop Press) SOLD OUT
Poetry
Dancing with Grandma
In Madagascar many Christians and practitioners of traditional ancestor worship
participate in death-dancing by pulling the remains of loved ones from the tomb,
dancing with the corpses, then carefully rewrapping them for re-interment.
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
I wrap you in blue wool like the sweater
you wore when I thought you looked like sky,
tie seven knots to hold you and dance
with your bones before the weather warms.
I tell you of Grandpa, how he died in his sleep
and was found still warm under the electric blanket
like the bread dough you covered with a towel
in your gas oven.
I say Maraleen moved to New Mexico
near Corinne and her Navajo husband;
and Glenn fell off a roof,
smashed his ankle just before Thanksgiving.
But maybe you know these things
and watch me play the record I gave you
and listen to Tennessee Ernie Ford.
We waltz on your grave, sway and turn,
then return you to rest with instant coffee
in a china cup and a sugar cookie
on a flowered plate from your kitchen
which still smells of pickled peaches,
strawberries and molasses.
On Turning Fifty-five
When I was eighteen,
my biology teacher took me to the zoo
during spring break
to see the koalas mate,
which made my friends envious,
and their jealousy was justified
since we all thought she loved me.
Miss _____ and I stood
by the cage eating Cracker Jacks
while one male scent marked
his prowess and bellowed.
She grabbed my hand and explained
how the loops, whorls, and arches
of koala fingerprints resembled ours
more than they resembled chimpanzees.
I told her chickens loved the faces
of pretty girls, so on our way home,
we ate at Koo Koo Roo’s and pretended
our salads were eucalyptus.
Then we bellowed across the parking lot
sharing the last drumstick.
And that was all I told my friends,
since even then I knew that primates
of the higher order never kiss and tell.
But last night when I saw her on TV,
playing “Name That Tune”
with rhesus monkeys, and one recognized
“Old MacDonald” before she did,
I wondered if maybe true love
would have made a difference;
you know, if I had shared
a young woman’s aging,
an old woman’s changing,
the guilt of pleasure bellowing?