chump threads

This was my first stab at a thing that would eventually come to be known as video literature. I was having a rough week, was feeling awful down, and hadn't created anything of substance for a good while, so I challenged myself to see if I could write a poem using my camera instead of a pen. This was the result, and I've been honing and sharpening my voice via this genre ever since.

For as long as I can remember I've always worn chump threads.

Whether a dark day in deepest February

or one of those August days where the steamy haze settles in so thick it obscures the opposite bank of the river

making it easy to imagine our landlocked little town exists on the east or west coast

I can usually be found in a pair of twelve dollar Wranglers and a t-shirt of one color or another.

I rented a tuxedo with shiny shoes for my wedding.

Freelance writer and filmmaker Joseph Johnston made his first movie at the age of 11, an industrial espionage thriller that continues to play to excited crowds in his parent’s living room every Christmas. His work has appeared in Rawboned, GTK Creative Journal, Old Northwest Review, and the Linden Avenue Literary Journal and his movie Fragments was the inaugural winner of the Iron Horse Literary Review's Video Literature contest. You can keep up with him at http://www.joe-johnston.com

For more work by Joe Johnston, visit his page at our Online Sundries site.

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