Johanna Magin

Half-light

From across the courtyard, three meters wide,
I catch the half-life of human forms,
the lamplight meant to trick the mind
that it’s already morning, when really the sun
will not rise in Paris for another half-hour.
I try not to be seen, although my window,
unlike theirs, is bare and I have
no protection other than the skin I have worn
all night, the barely visible, dream-like film
that won’t slip from my figure until I wipe
my face clean in the mirror.
Their faces rarely surface, and when they do,
it is to corral the steam from the pot
to the window, and their glance tells me
I have caught them in an act of thievery,
stealing air from air, the gray behemoth of sky
unwarranted. Some nights, I catch the half-scent
of their habits from my early sleep. Lots of garlic,
a preference for frying. Stews on Sunday.
But what I will never know is how
he glances back at her as she slips through
the doorframe, or how she silently howls
in the bathroom while drying her hair,
the steam sequestering her attempts at clarity.
And they will never know how I wash my dishes
while nude, the story of Judas worn on my temples,
green lentils spilling to the ground.
They will never know how Pablo Casals is made
to repeat the same gesture over and over in my mind,
signing the air with his bow. Or how latency
is a word I’ve honored by the book, so that the sight
of me might never be obvious. So many things
they’ll never know, my life a pocket
of their untethered steam.

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Johanna Magin is an American-born researcher and writer based in Paris, France, who holds a PhD in French Literature from Columbia University and has taught literature and philosophy for several years at the university level. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in The Georgia Review, The Bennington Review, Wildness, Poetry Wales, The Nimrod International Journal and elsewhere. She was named the winner of the 2024 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize at The Georgia Review by Cole Swensen, as well as the winner of the 2024 Francine Ringold Awards in poetry at Nimrod. She was named a finalist for the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize, judged by A.E. Stallings, and a finalist for the 2024 Levis Prize at Four Way Books, judged by Ilya Kaminsky. More of her work can be found at: https://johannamagin.com/.