MIKE PENCE, I AM NOT TRYING TO SEDUCE YOU

by Melissa Fite Johnson

Tweet by Quinn Sutherland‏ @ReelQuinn, March 30, 2017:  “Yes, I’m here for my meeting with Mike Pence.”

No need to pluck the napkin from your lap,
Mike, I’ll only stay a moment. I have
a table already, over there by that window.
See my husband, speaking with the waitress
in a way that doesn’t make me uncomfortable?
Yes, I agree—the waitress is beautiful!
There’s something about a natural redhead,
you’re so right. It looks like he’s ordered us
a bottle of wine. That’s nice. Anyway,
Mike, if you could put down your fork
for a moment, I wanted to talk to you about
Planned Parenthood. Oh, stop, I understand
this is a fancy place, but surely some people
are talking shop. What about that booth?
Four white men, all in suits. You don’t think
that’s a business meeting? Please.
I’ve seen photos of your business meetings.
As I was saying—hey, could I sit for a minute?
I feel a bit awkward hovering over you
like some genie. Wait, are you blushing?
Do you have a thing for I Dream of Jeannie?
Heh, should I call you Major? No need to
flag down a waiter, Mike, I’m kidding.
So my friend went to Planned Parenthood
two years ago, and it ended up saving her—
Hello? Mike? Oh, is that your wife over there?
Talking to my husband? He probably
called out to her as she left the restroom.
She looks fine to me, Mike. Oh, my God,
did you really just ask about my intentions?
I intend to tell you how Planned Parenthood—
Jesus, I’ll explain my intentions as soon as
she comes over here. For now, she’s laughing
pretty hard. Yeah, my husband’s hilarious.
You know, it wouldn’t kill you to crack a joke
now and then. You’ve got one?  Let’s hear it!
Christ, Mike, a blonde joke? That’s the kind of
sexist thinking I’m concerned about. Sure,
take a moment, try again. Yes, I can see
your wife’s still laughing. Mike, seriously.
I’m not worried; you don’t need to be worried.

Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015),won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book. Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas. 

3 EXCUSES FOR NOT MARCHING AND THEN A POEM

by Melissa Fite Johnson

A woman wears a Statue of Liberty crown and holds a torch at the Women’s March in New York on Saturday. Credit Sara Hylton/The New York Times via Alaska Dispatch News, January 22, 2017



1. Dry throat I must coat with water or I’ll cough. 
2. Dog-sitting for a friend so she can march. 
3. The angry parent who checked Facebook 
to confirm I’m a liberal teacher.  

He might find this poem.
It makes me squirm, the thought he could take 
my thoughts from my head. My old professor 
always says, It’s easier not to write. 
Today, it was easier not to lurch 
open the garage, turn the key, thrust myself 
into history, into the brave crowd 
filling their lungs with songs instead of doubt. 
My body won’t speck a grainy photograph. 

August 28, 1963, a young girl rested 
her arm on a rail, her head on her arm. The video 
unspools her at “sweltering with the heat of 
oppression.” Every phrase was 
a lighted match. Each flame passed through her. 

January 21, 2017, what words, what fire
I could have carried home like a torch.


Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book.  Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere.  Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas.

THE WATER PARK IN AUGUST

by Melissa Fite Johnson






I. Before

After Kansas City soccer, Children’s Mercy
Park, we drive south for home, two hours away.
The world’s tallest water slide looms at Schlitterbahn,
lit green at night, the spiral walk-up staircase
Godzilla’s head and body, the slide its tongue
unfurling.  Who would ride that monstrosity,
my husband and I joke, and it is a joke, menacing
as that structure is, because we’re safe in our car,
or feel we are at least, our breakable bodies and soft flesh
dashing down the highway in our aluminum bubble.

II. After

I imagine the boy they found in the pool
also felt safe, at least initially, strapped in his raft.
Higher than Niagara; faster than a cheetah;
steeper than any ski slope!  The website called the slide
jaw-dropping.  The website called the slide
gut-wrenching.  I shouldn’t read the stories.  They don’t
bring him back.  They all show the same picture:
brown eyes freckled nose dark hair baseball cap.
Baseball bat on his shoulder.  Ears like mine, elfish
tips that stick out, tinged red from the sun warming his back.

Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book.  Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere.  Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas.

THIS IS THE DETAIL THAT BREAKS ME

by Melissa Fite Johnson

Colleagues and parents on Thursday remembered Philando Castile as an ambitious man who served as a role model for hundreds of children before he was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota. Photo: Philando Castile (L) is seen with a colleague in this undated J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School yearbook photo. —TIME, July 7, 2016

Philando Castile, cafeteria
supervisor, remembered
which students couldn’t have
milk.  I imagine his kids
lined up under the fluorescent
hum, pushing plastic trays
along the chrome lunch counter.
Yes to mashed potatoes.
No to baked beans.  A little
more corn, please.  Last stop
the quiet act of reaching
down into the chest cooler
to select white, chocolate,
or infinitely less popular juice
for kids Phil might’ve consoled
with a smile or clap on the shoulder.


Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book.  Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rust + Moth, Broadsided Press, velvet-tail, and elsewhere.  Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband in Kansas.

ON RAY RICE

A poem, 
found among comments on YouTube responding to the Ray Rice video,
by Melissa Fite Johnson






Dumb bitch started it.  Cunt
ruined his career.  Too bad
he didn’t break her fucking jaw off.
Act like a man, try and hit one,
get treated like a man.  This is what
equality looks like.  Girls
are as much of a threat
as guys.  She slapped him first.
She’s the aggressor.  What the fuck
do you see?  A man beating
his woman?  He defended himself
against a human being with
the potential to hurt him.
All those white feminists need to
shut the fuck up.  Period.  This is
what equality looks like.  It probably
wasn't his intention to knock her out,
but shit happens.  She should've
thought of that before assaulting
an NFL player.  A woman
deserves equal rights.
She has to take responsibility
for her actions.  She had it coming.
This is what equality looks like.


Melissa Fite Johnson teaches English at Pittsburg High School in Kansas.  She’s had poetry published in Cave Region Review, The Little Balkans Review, and Inscape Magazine, as well as in the Kansas Notable Book poetry collection To the Stars Through Difficulties. The Little Balkans Press will publish her first book of poetry While the Kettle’s On this year. Melissa and her husband, Marc, live in Pittsburg with their dog and several chickens.