Issue 34 | Spring 2026

with history trapped inside us

Stacey C. Johnson

The problem in the highway days was where to begin.

Even the lions we imagined becoming went lame.

Our backs bent early, sights set on oblivion.

War was everywhere. Fathers called it peace.

Developments advanced battalion by battalion

toward the rumored end of history. The weather ecstatic.

Furniture ads relentless. Strip malls glowing

in rivering taillights. The id ran out of land.

A gas station canopy burned red against the dusk.

Mirrors closed into screens. Our drives consumed us.

Who were we to think ourselves architects?

After the getting and spending, what remained

but the shock of touch, the idea of rest?

When the desert bloomed, we misread it—

called it sudden. That was what we knew.

About the Author

Stacey C. Johnson is a writer and teacher working in a variety of forms. She is the author of Flight Songs (Finishing Line Press, 2024), and her essays, poems, fiction, and hybrid work have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies. She teaches literature and creative writing and is currently working on a book-length project exploring creativity, care, and survival in precarious times. Her work often examines language as a practice of attention and resistance in moments of personal and collective precarity.