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A Literary Blog

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I am a writer based in New Jersey. I have a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a Master’s degree from the University of Toronto. I have experience as a German to English translator, a technical writer, and a grant writer. In my writing, I explore myth, legend, and languages. This blog is devoted to my past and future writings. – Johanna Rodda

  • Down From Heaven



    As I looked down from heaven,

    I was saddened much to see

    (from a place where I could no longer

    affect the things that happen in the world)

    she refused to take her six pills a day,

    the god-given remedy for the kind of illness

    no one likes to mention.

    She would not take them ever,

    in the morning, at noon, or at night.

    I saw, looking down, trying to understand

    the bare, pale sickness that wracked her mind,

    that she would do only certain things –

    count her fingers: one, two, three, four,

    one, two, three, four,

    lying in bed or upon a quiet night.

    I guess she hoped that having such firm control

    over her body would yield comfort in spades.

    As I looked down from heaven,

    how could I do anything else

    but cry (if angels can)

    to see how she engaged with men

    she’d met sometimes on the streets of cities,

    going back with them to their apartments –

    they said that they were DJs,

    and so cool – to spend the night

    in full, or just to four a.m.


    To see how little sleep she was apt to get,

    writing furiously in notebooks,

    for hours on end, never looking up,

    in her room, her little apartment,

    or up the streets and then down,

    writing, writing, with every moment

    growing more fearsome, more furious,

    more deep into her own mind,

    thinking thoughts of grandeur, of world renown:

    that she was the next great Shakespeare;

    that the great American novel

    was going to come bounding out of her steady,

    sprawling, scrambling scrawling on the page.

    To see her living fantasies –

    that she was a spy, a secret agent –

    to see her slinking through the streets,

    on a mission, canny, coy, putting together

    the little sunken secrets, to craft

    a view of life I can’t warn her from,

    no, not anymore, and she just goes tumbling,

    turning, every day falling deeper and deeper

    into unrealities: my god – I think –

    one day, she might really try to fly!

    To see all this, and I can’t – I cannot –

    there is no chance for loving interaction

    between angels and the people they care for,

    still plying their days on dusky earth.

    No.

    There is not.

    But maybe – just maybe – I can in fact look down,

    stir a little breath on the leaves of the trees

    as she clambers through a park in town,

    and with that wisp from loving heaven,

    give some rest to her soul.

  • Anorexic



    When I was being treated for anorexia at the health services at my college, they made me turn around on the scale during my appointments so I couldn’t see the number on it. I had no idea how much I weighed. My doctor’s office also didn’t have a mirror, so I couldn’t look at myself there. But no matter. I’d go back to my dorm room and catch a glimpse of my rotund form in my own, floor-length mirror, and I would try not to hate what I saw. I would hate it, anyway.

                “I hope you know that we are just trying to help you.”

                My doctor sat in front of her computer, while I sat just off to the side. My arm was still in the sling from the accident I had suffered a couple of weeks before, and I was thinking about that instead of listening to my doctor. I thought about the patch of ice that had been in the way of my morning run, how, instead of going around it, I had run right over it. In the middle, my feet gave out and I went flying. I ended up with a fractured left elbow, my arm now in a sling that severely limited my range of motion.

    “Sorry,” I said to my doctor, snapping back to attention. With my thoughts straying to my accident, I hadn’t heard what she had said.

                “I hope you know that we are just trying to help you,” she repeated. “It’s possible that, because you haven’t been eating enough, your bones are brittle. That could have been one of the reasons you fractured your elbow. How have things been going with the nutritionist?”

                I shrugged my shoulders, fiddling with my fingers in my lap, unable to look my doctor in the eyes.

                “She says I need to put on fifteen more pounds before I can run again.”

                “In time for the Boston Marathon, right?”

                I shrugged again, still looking down.

                “Guess so.”

                “And you’re not running or exercising right now?”

                I shook my head.

                “My balance would be off anyway if I did,” I said.

                My doctor stared at me as if to determine not whether I was lying, but to what degree. I looked up at her and tried to reassure her with an innocent look.

                “You’re going to have to be extra careful walking the streets,” she said, “so you don’t fall again and reinjure yourself, or break something else. This is Cambridge, after all, capital of snow and slush and ice. Promise me you’ll take the nutritionist’s advice to heart. Have a cookie with dinner or something. Don’t just eat salad.”

                “How much weight have I put on?”

                I just had to know. I weighed in at eighty-two pounds on my first visit, and since then they always turned me around on the scale so I couldn’t see what my weight was. I wished my doctor would just tell me.

                “You really don’t need to worry about that,” she said, looking back at the computer. She typed something in, silent for a moment, then looked back at me.

                “You know,” she said, “you’re such a beautiful young lady, and if we lost you, or if any other bad things happened to you because of your illness – I’m allowed to call anorexia an illness now, and I want you to consider it in that light for a while – I would feel very very bad and also personally responsible. You don’t want me to have to feel bad about myself because my star patient had something terrible happen to her, now would you?”

                I cocked my head to the side. It was a roundabout way of getting at the matter, but then my doctor was clever.

                “I don’t connect my wellbeing with your personal sense of fulfillment,” I said.

                “Oh, well,” my doctor said, turning toward me, sighing deeply and laying a hand on the computer table. “I think it’s also about feeling good about yourself and what you have to contribute. Besides, as I said, your bones may be fragile because of all this dieting you’ve been doing. I’m going to send you for a bone density test. You don’t want to end up with a hump from kyphosis by the time you’re twenty-seven, do you?”

                This, more than anything the doctor had said up to then, made me perk up and listen.

                “What?” A mental picture was forming itself, of me in my twenties with a hump on my back.

                “Yes,” my doctor said. “I’m going to order a test for you at Mount Auburn Hospital. That will show us a little better what we’re dealing with, to see what your bones are like.”

                “What my bones are like?” I asked, still stunned. My mouth was open a little as I waited for my doctor’s response.

                “This really is no joke,” my doctor said. “I think you don’t fully realize how important it is that you get out of this illness.”

                A hump at twenty-seven? Surely things weren’t that dire. She must be making a joke to scare me into cooperating.

                “Go for the test,” my doctor said, getting up from her chair in front of the computer. “Put on those fifteen pounds, and then you can run as much as you want to. Just not over sheer patches of ice.”

                With that, she left, giving me some privacy to get out of my blue paper gown and back into my normal clothes. As I put on my clothes awkwardly because of the sling, I pondered what she had said. Osteoporotic kyphosis at twenty-seven? There was no way.

                Before I left the room, I glanced over at the scale. I looked at it for a long time, letting the thoughts churn in my mind. Thinning bones? A hump at twenty-seven? It gave me chills. Yet, I just needed to step on the scale to know how far from ultimate perfection I was.

                Instead, I draped my coat back over myself and left the office.

  • Fireworks



    The fireworks burst, to the delight of all,

    in gleaming shards, in patches of color,

    scattered in the sky, against the dark.

    And where light was once,

    there it will not be again.

    The light more spirit than substance.

    As if just impulse, upon a black night.

    As if not really something: as if streaks of thought.

    As if nothing. As if not.

    As if all the world could come to be

    the merest streak against the blackest

    wisp of night.

    And choirs would be singing its way to the heavens.

    And fire would burn as bright as stars.

    And all that was would ignite –

    I’d be there, too, riding on a constellation –

    and everything would be the merest burst

    in the vastest emptiness of thought.

    The fireworks burst, like the birth of our being.

    Like the bang so far ago.

    Like light before all things to come.

    Like now. Like nothing.

    Like all that could be.

    With every flicker of light, a flame,

    small and bright, coming from the most primal blaze

    created on the first day of everything.

    Light from dark, and so life began.

    The fireworks.

    Against a night-dark sky.

    And, where light once was,

    there it will not be again.

  • Rose Perfume



    She came into the cafe to meet the man she loved.

    Her hair coifed in a tight bun,

    her dress framing close her slim physique.

    Her makeup was on; a hint of blush

    lay on her cheeks, faint color of blood.

    Her nails were done: pink she chose,

    both on the nails of her hands and on her toes.

    Her stockings little shaded

    the compact shapeliness of her calves.

    Heels as high as her feet were long

    rounded out her whole physique.

    Around her neck: a curl of silver

    with crystals like stars embedded,

    and a silver ring around her finger.

    Her right wrist was braceleted

    with a circlet of thin white gold.

    And, on top of it all, there came

    from the area of her neck,

    and all over her encircled frame,

    a steady haze of rose perfume.

    With a firm step she crossed the space

    to where the man she loved sat.

    When he saw her, he looked up from his book,

    keenly into her eyes, and said with a crooked stare,

    “But I do not love you for your rose perfume.”

  • One Haven Place



    … with a backyard porch,

    and a dog waiting at the front door.

    Carefully I turned my ear, my tiny sister

    spouting to me hopes of what would be.

    A bright and fairy-tale future.

    … and a big space where I could ride my bike indoors,

    and a big pool with a big water slide.

    And my Prince Charming bringing me flowers

    every day, and double on my birthday.

    A tender part of me, that was still a child,

    wanted to believe all the things she said

    would really come to be. How young she was,

    and I was old!

    Already she had given a name

    to where her future home would be:

    castle-like, of course; “One Haven Place”.

    And it would have crenelated towers

    (to sign the word, she used her fingers

    to carve out the jagged pattern in the air),

    and a green courtyard lush with grass,

    with pretty trees that bloomed in May,

    and a big, big bedroom with a big, big bed,

    with posts reaching up ceiling-high,

    lots of fluffy pillows, a comforter

    woven through with thread of gold.

    With a kitchen always open

    to steal into, pilfer chocolates,

    or cranberry scones, or whipped cream,

    mountains of cookies, lakes of pudding.

    And a big, big, great big ballroom

    where all the women, in lovely dresses,

    and the men in fancy tuxes

    would dance the night so lightly away.

    How young, I thought, she was,

    as I sat and listened to all she wanted

    to be real in her dream house, my sister,

    in One Haven Place.

    And how life, then, would in fact

    be perfect.

    I measure the distance between my sister

    and my self not in years, but

    in hopeful wishes made while young.

    Vast her dreams are. Broad they reach.

    Did I, too, have such dreams

    when I was a younger version of myself?

    To have the perfect house, and home,

    husband, kitchen, ballroom,

    and love – and dog, to boot?

    Some version, I think, of those dreams

    has been the purview and province

    of everyone who has ever sought happiness.

    I am older now.

    My happiness is reality-tempered.

    I’ve learned happiness through what is given,

    and what is possible, likely.

    I will hold ever the hope, that my Prince Charming,

    my house with crenelated walls,

    and the dog – to boot – is out there somewhere.

    But what in this would could at all be better

    than to see on my sister’s face

    a smile that told me all she wished

    would one day come indeed to light?

  • The McDonald’s Counter



    In the ward, it’s “the McDonald’s counter.”

    But there are no juicy burgers here,

    no fries, no shake to boot.

    Here, the libations are the pills,

    little tablets in all the colors that be.

    The counter’s just waist-high, with no cover;

    you could jump clear over if you wanted.

    But who would want to do that, anyway?

    Still, it’s the centerpiece of the ward.

    Around it, in the morning, after breakfast,

    at lunch, at dinner, and just before sleep:

    the line forms, a long line, snaking

    all around the dayroom, of people in the ward

    who need the pills to keep them straight,

    or silent, or both at once, or so they’re not anxious,

    or angry, or antsy, so they don’t bite their nails,

    or jump over rails onto a busy street below.

    So they’re not overeager, just have a meager

    sense of where they’re existing, and why.

    The others take them, and so do I.

    And, once the pills are dosed, most retreat

    to their various tasks, or in the dayroom, group begins.

    So, I’ve learned to shelve my fancier notions –

    I’m the President, or leader of the world –

    and to exist instead always within the bounds

    of the rules of existence I have to follow.

    Or, with which I contend. Sometimes, I wish

    this’d end. My up and down, I mean.

    But, ever there, the McDonald’s counter stands

    in the very middle of all our cases, hopes:

    to pill us, to instill in us, notions of how

    life is meant to be well lived.

    Those’re the pills the McDonald’s counter gives.

  • A Cup of Cream



    In the wide café, where I sat and I sipped,

    I saw a man come in not at all like other men.

    No different was his shape. You would have known

    him as a man, whenever seen.

    But he was dressed in rags. Had a lean look

    about him, as if he were one more day

    to starvation, could have used a good, clean meal.

    I watched him come into the café, in the center city,

    hand over crinkled bills for a cup of warmth.

    Out the corner of my eye as I read, I watched

    him sit at a table, a little away.

    He sipped his coffee, soft and slow.

    Then, I watched him still as he went

    up to where they kept the milk

    and poured himself a cup of cream.

    He returned to his seat. No hint of shame.

    No one he turned to look at, head down.

    Met no one’s eyes, just back to his seat,

    sipped his cream in slow gulps.

    A while, then, I watched (from the corner

    of my staring eye) as once again he got a cup of cream.

    Had I seen him on the street before?

    Familiar, his face. Had I passed by him

    on the city sidewalks, sometime, paying only

    scant attention to those without firm places to live

    as I went to the beach, or the store?

    I said nothing, just watched the man, sucking life

    from the tall carafe of cream.

    Who would I have been if I had complained?

    I turned back to my cup of coffee, enjoyed its dark warmth.

  • A Letter To You, My Friend



    Dear Friend,

    It was wonderful this week, to see and talk to you again.

    You’ll keep me in your thoughts, won’t you,

    as you go about your days in that far city

    while I ply my life many thousands of miles away?

    When I saw you on the corner, by our college, standing there

    just as I used to see you all those years ago,

    when we would meet at midnight and walk

    long streets lapped in the neon lights of town,

    it felt like I had never left – our city –

    all those many, many, many years ago.

    Do you remember? That day we first met?

    At a barbecue in the quadrangle, with hamburgers and watermelon,

    the juice running down our cheeks as if we were crying for joy.

    We were just neophytes then.

    We had much to learn.

    Then how, when fall came, and winter, we’d stow ourselves away,

    cuddled, huddled together in our rooms as we read together.

    A long, snowy season we spent like that, testing, trusting,

    scoping out our hopes and dreams as we lay together,

    on your bed or mine, our bodies near each other,

    enjoying just being there, side by side, to watch a movie.

    In spring, we sat under the trees and watched the finches

    fighting over grains of seed with which we sowed them.

    With the coming of summer came my going-away.

    We said goodbye at the gate of the college.

    I did not know, then, when I would be back, if at all.

    I didn’t hug you then.

    I couldn’t.

    It would have been too intimate, and yet too indifferent,

    to hug when we parted, to enfold you in my arms.

    This world is far too small for the love I have for you.

    It was pleasant, it was pure, to return to you again.

    What other word than “love” can ever come close

    to expressing to you in full, dear friend,

    what it is I feel for you, and always will?

  • The Night Away



    This very night, late into the night,

    in my bed before sleep, after a meeting of friends,

    I lie keenly awake reading a book under the covers,

    not wanting the day to end.

    Because, tonight, I met someone who moved my soul.

    I know only his name and where he is from.

    All else is not yet clear to me but may be in time.

    We shared a laugh, we talked of music,

    we looked at poems traded in a group.

    I had some of the profoundest thoughts

    I am ever likely to have access to in my time.

    And then, when I came back home,

    I threw my bag on the floor, my coat on the rack,

    changed into pajamas, warmed up my bed.

    I got my notebook out. I wrote a verse

    while watching a documentary on medieval scriptoria.

    But there is something else that stirs within me now.

    A force of nascent love and wonder.

    I can deal with, regulate, my feelings through poetry alone.

    What a great, grand joy it is, at times throughout the day

    to think of nothing else but the stirrings of deep-set feelings,

    the slow grab of emotion, and to be sucked in by them a little.

    No, I do not want to go to bed tonight.

    No, nor any other night.

    How can I, feeling what I do, ranging

    out into the dusky, ill-trod expanses

    that are the domain of this emotion I encounter?

    I want only to lie and think a while longer.

    Please, let me wonder the night away!

  • His Paintings



    The paintings stand as a testament

    to all the places he went,

    all the things he did in his life.

    There is an oceanscape:

    bright and true, the azurine blue,

    with ships and a lighthouse to shine

    the way to sailors on the sea.

    There is a young girl, dressed

    in a dress with flounces, pearls

    around her neck: just slightly misshapen,

    this folk-art wonder.

    There is a view of a quaint town:

    horses and buggies. Empire houses.

    Paths of dirt. Vegetable gardens.

    And a secret cove, in which swim

    people out enjoying the summer warmth.

    Of course, there is a bowl of fruit.

    Apples and pears and grapes

    looking as if to burst right out

    of the container in which they lie.

    A quiet café scene.

    A mountain rising high.

    A beach with foamy surf.

    A city plentiful with skyscrapers.

    An Earthrise from past the Moon.

    No sailor he. No astronaut.

    No painter. No styler of fruit.

    No, but a constant traveler

    in this world, one who saw, through art,

    a way into eternity.