Miriam Levine
Keeping Air Plants Alive
It is a warm soft day. There’s hardly a sound in my room.
The only thing moving is the drag of the curtain on the sill.
When I spray the air plants with fine mist,
moisture clouds the leaves and disappears.
There is a usefulness I love on this quiet day.
Meeting
A beautiful man comes toward me on the path— shoes
orange, socks, too, smoothed to his muscled calves, hair
frizzled with orange at the top, his skin
the color of mahogany, but soft, I bet. O glorious
six-feet-plus: at the sight I feel pleasure heat
me to the bone until I take in his face—fixed,
wary, tense. I lift my small orange scarf like a flag. And he
smiles, leaning toward me. The color of the day, he says.
Relief
It’s freedom to know the sun is indifferent
and completely itself,
our burning untouchable star,
imminent
night and morning—rosy shades of dawn,
dangerous heat at noon, blue
twilight and the gold glaze of an afterglow,
moonlight strong enough for shadows—freedom
to learn there are trillions of galaxies
and countless suns that do not know our names.
During John’s Surgery
When they wheeled him in, I locked
myself in the car. Gluey raindrops stuck
to the windshield like fish eggs. A hairy
man sulked by the hospital door, an inch
of pale skin for a forehead like a werewolf’s.
He grimaced, showing his teeth, and I shrank
into myself, unable to move. In ancient
times I would have believed my enemies
had prayed to Phobos, the god of fear
to shock me, like warriors before
battle, who slaughtered a bull and prayed,
as they dipped their hands in the gore.
John Remembers
After all the work, all the countries,
the names I’ve forgotten, I remember
the hotel in Dallas, the rooms opening
to galleries around an atrium
and far below a man at the piano, the music
floating up—so beautiful—and the girl in Shanghai
when I tried to buy a ticket and the language
confused me. A stranger. She took my hand
and led me inside the theater. In my life as a man
nothing like this had ever happened before.
From My Window
True north the sooty clouds are shot with silver,
gray swathes break up our sunset
streaked silver-white—and quiet. I think
there can’t be too much silver—or redemption.
Now the wind turns leaves to silver undersides
shining high on the old tree true
to its name, silver maple. And below my window,
at the House for Mental Health Services
rescue trucks flash lurid red and true
workers roll out a gurney on which
a young client lies unconscious,
his left arm dangling off the edge.
Miriam Levine is the author of Forget about Sleep, her sixth poetry collection, winner of the 2023 Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award. Another collection, The Dark Opens, was chosen for the Autumn House Poetry Prize. Other books include: Devotion, a memoir; In Paterson, a novel. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares. Levine, winner of a Pushcart Prize, is a fellow of the NEA and a grantee of the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. She lives in Florida and New Hampshire. For more information about her work, please go to miriamlevine.com.
Author photo credit: Peter Biello
Miriam Levine at the Laura Boss Poetry Foundation
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