Johanna Drucker: California Poets Part 10, Five Poems

Johanna Drucker

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Johanna Drucker

Five Poems

In which the Clichés

Familiar insights,

carved in the arc of history,

remain long with us.

Machinations are the stuff of our waking lives

with or without the theory language

to describe them.

Then the bees appear.

Shimmering in their bright titanium waistcoats,

robot whiskers alive to the least amount of sun,

they are under a new command,

brilliant as raindrops in another time

they refract wave motions while they move.

The headline patterns of their well-regulated dance

just miss the verve of the original,

but the whole hive shudders at an occasional disturbance

when a stochastic re-org resets the system.

Parables in a radically altered universe of relations,

particles, that is,

they appear swift as upstream ions

making their way against ever increasing odds of collapse.

Demonstration

The horizontal landscape tilted

bringing the sun up to reach the sky.

At the limit of human vision a train ran along Its rails,

              old remnants of the iron age, cutting a distant swath of action

through the stillness

                separating the heavens and the earth.

The flanged wheels turned

                red hot with friction in memory of an earlier time

                to which they still paid homage by sticking to their route.

The daily pattern of delivery and pick-up eased the pain of habit

                making it slightly better to receive than to give.

But the blood banks over flowed

                and even the smallest, meekest creatures saw their future

                in a grain of sand, sparkling with promise, bright as De Beers,

                but made in our labs and available for a fraction of the price.

Picking his way among the platelets and leaflets, the leader

                of the free market tripped up the stairs.

                on the ruins of the square a false front set had been constructed

                to promote redevelopment.

“Not to worry!” the sign proclaimed, slightly off-center,

causing the windows of one façade

to slip below the comfort level.

Illusory stone sills saluted the stage set cornice along the painted door.

The clouds were sketched artfully, just a few days after the eclipse,

                the drama queen girlfriend staged

                an outrageous party in the streets, smoking violently

                and blowing billows to match the cumulus skyline.

Fresh start! They proclaimed with buoyant spirits.

A thousand mirror-surface balloons grab the glazed smile from her face

                to demonstrate the warm behavior of collective thought

                through which vivid reflections

                streamed a bright world.

News Agency

Signs tough calculus

The more rivals

Penalty

The better

Blast the very best

Painstakingly

Shop

& ban diversity

After battering

Wild snub gets immediately

Handshake attacks of opponent

Families grieve

To master the future of war

A moment

And sacrifice, service, a debt

So much faster

Leaders line upDay drinking, advice

Re-elected negotiations the reasonable

Middle or give too much?

Won’t shake better ties

And the military alliance

Distorted by the rush

Complicated story

Five takeaways

Tough to beat.

Day of Woman’s 

Celebrated after

the organized international

focal movement annually.

Better achievement

balanced world to run.

Collective story or equality no single

no any one

but who all.

Make your to make difference.

Celebrating call suffragists and further.

Campaigned collectivity accelerating.

Gender prior to group or organization.

Specific. 1909 became

after national some places

protest public and ignored.

Elsewhere observance claims following honoring.

Last protested discrimination in part socialists.

No paraded rights including equal.

For the right and to hold.

Suffrage.

Workers demanding

The strike support mass in streets.

Days later granted women

Second-wave began celebrating

Feel-good rather reforms

Gravest of conflicts

not relent other forms sexual violence.

Countless conflict zones every.

Harass who came to hundreds or stood by.

More action wives and gone missing.

Economic and search.

Information map historic rights.

Message contributions not flight

empowering control over the our world future our.

Recognition honoring. Day of.

Molecular Age

The tight bonds

Dry and loosen

Against distant combat

Electrons drop

A shell

Energy released

Disperses

Boundary conditions still

Unbalanced

the power

Earth its axis shifted

Tilts

Harvest light

Autumn now

Again

But irreversible

That place in time

Become this

Of life

Author Bio:

Johanna Drucker is an artist, writer, and critic whose work has been published by various small presses, journals, and in limited edition artist’s books that are in special collections throughout North America and beyond. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in UCLA’s Department of Information Studies and is internationally known for her scholarship in visual poetry, history of writing, visual epistemology, and digital humanities. For more information: www.johannadrucker.net