Johanna Costigan

Johanna M. Costigan is a writer from New York who lives in Shanghai, China.

Baby Diplomacy

No wonder the jails don’t fill. English was offered as enrichment; some people are their own identifiers. Stop reprimanding her for painting the subway or claiming the abandoned money. She was just doing the bare minimum under improvised provinces; promises stepping over city lines. Europe, the paper weight, overshared.

I built a pool between the rich and one digit. Or? And? Shut up the conjunctions. They wrote through thunder. No one corrected counterparts: bilingual beings, who were they to decipher foreign dictionaries–dignitaries mostly just wait in line anyway: don’t they?

~

Foreign Clients

I couldn’t tell if it was a tick or a freckle. Either might itch. The traditional kind of baby advertises itself. I took a bath underground, listening to the city stomp. Clean–but still itchy–I chose the stairs.

So many people turn to inanimate objects. Over the elevator’s panting, complaints bounced off metal walls, a synesthetic rainbow of ringtones. They answer but insist–in perfect Mandarin–on English.

~

Not Necessarily

Your sidewalk tomb fire was happening tomorrow, but I never left the last night

like the juice no one brings up, the huge cities we don’t talk about

the birth, about the death, about the difference between health and medical, whoever labeled you able bodied wasn’t wrong.

Sitting still? The next article you read will say it’s the cure forward,

you chew with a hard silk tooth, the taste of blood

between meals and the headache when

you picture rat heart moving.

Citizen journalists admit that there is not just one system swimming

taxing before it thinks

we investigate: hot on the bus, trees planted late,

that afternoon you spent overlapping in bed.

You were quiet when it rained. Our eyes sat on you. Everyone didn’t explain.

When the other birds died we didn’t have to ask why. 

Johanna is from New York and lives in Shanghai. She writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She’s a recent graduate of Bard College and works at NYU Shanghai as a Writing and Speaking Fellow.

Three Poems

Someone has to play the dog on a leash.

I wrote it down locked out

“did the cop leave his mark on me when he still didn’t look away?”

Her muumuu

hid the character

for peace has the grain radical in it:

if everyone can eat…

Real dogs are not leashed

though sometimes they are

clothed. Small pink shoes and baggy tube shirt skirt.

A European family of five locks eyes with the least interesting thing on the street:

French bistro.

How much fun is it to edit your food and face? Curious, they got their phones out. I couldn’t tell if you were sick, even when you coughed. Maybe it was smoke. I massaged my own back with a pissed fist.

I guessed how to speak second language sign language. No one noticed the pig in misery while they took pictures with the midget puppy. I keep telling you it’s not hypocritical to prefer food that doesn’t come from your own restaurant. I heard of a girl without lobes who buys hoops just for fun.

~

The hardest part of miming is keeping symmetry in air. Please do not smoke during the entire flight. She signs the word for “stewardess” like the child that claimed 可以. Her arms gesture above the cobalt neck noose, the bow.

The sign has EXIT lit up in two languages: 出口 plus the arrow. 我们都知道怎么离开. Patterns folding inside, themselves fat in a core.

It’s a difficult trend for 老外, the outside. Other citizens pursue a collective personification of nation, and 外国人, pretend, again. Some vowels you have to send.

~

Everything you ever wanted to know about animals.

Underwater, Gilgamesh stole the vibrator. I moved into his jaw and we didn’t kiss. He was the strongest; I was the one killing villains. The crab king and I alternated wins; his legs were his downfall. It took a lot of work to crush a crustacean. Old skin slid off the shelled sea mammoth. The ocean ate it. Gilgamesh was the last whale there.

Other species are a mystery. Snakes will not seem to be handicapped. Their soft underbelly is their soft underbelly. Do beavers use sonar? Let this be self-evident: cats can hear death. Everything you see could be remembered. Are salmon bottom feeders? Trust: fish farms would not exist if you didn’t get hungry. I first noticed the circles in your neck when it became clear you were like one of those priests, treating all prey the same.

Johanna is from New York and lives in Shanghai. She writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She’s a recent graduate of Bard College and works at NYU Shanghai as a Writing and Speaking Fellow.

Four Poems

Other than the older ones, no one blinked. I asked what you had for lunch and you said it was some kind of rubric; where the snow fell hard, I ate in yellow. I somehow hated even your chuckle. It swung in everyone’s air, empty and sterile, a hanged eunuch. Your shorthand stretched. You were giving them orders. I tapped on the window since the door was locked. I made it a calm tap, like all I wanted was the attention of a bird.

~

The crazy that comes from posture. The silent crazy, the one you just see. Her weight balances on one foot, her neck twists. What’s the definition of a resource? There are rules about how much space has to be between people in a car and people on the street. Her hand breaks them and slams itself on the window. Her head seems to grow.

If you fall, the baby falls. “Men don’t hear that.” How many disasters could you email through? You were never gullible. She smashed the glass and used it on you. Opening your mouth hurt. Some people blamed heavy winds for her broken foot. The last thing you were was surprised. She didn’t know what would happen tomorrow but when she saw the calendar she had to update.

~

When she felt nervous she vomited entrance. Her phlegm was an escalator. Everyone stood still and descended. Traded tips. Advice about stocks. Slime metal edged along. The man next to her spoke into his left ear, convincing himself to invest. They were getting lower as her blood rose. The bottom was somewhere to be from instead of toward, she thought. Her gut protested. The headset men stomped on spiked stair metal. Something flipped; the ceiling was coming down. They started to die noticeably. Life left that underground. She was the only one still living in the sand lamp. Carved her name into the last raw stomach, and she, the blonde girl no one knew, finally made friends. Her loyal group, her gold trophies.

~

Ode To Armadillo. Little armored thing. Show me your cheek teeth. I’d let you bite me if we videotape it. How many weapons could I make from your carcass? I was always your claw but in death it was you who dug me. End of story quick change.

You were alone unless it was breeding season. I knew you were getting younger when you got loose skin, reaching sexual maturity at nine weeks. You were the comfortably disheveled sort.  If pursued, the armadillo changes from its normal shifting shuffling to a scuttle, eventually reaching a gallop with remarkable speed.

It was hard work but eventually I caught up to you. Played the cheetah. I never thought revenge was an ugly word until I started wearing it. Stop complaining, I only took your tail.