Ever-changing by Allen Forrest. Image courtesy of the artist.
We were puppies on a crew team and you’d grin at my jokes about balding grandmas
Squealing after a few words—that yes—your grandmother was a child molester
And we’d drink thoughts that were iced tea from a sports bar
Stroll on dilapidated wood left at Midtown construction sites
Drink water processed in Iran, despite the boycott
Then you married the bloke from Brown, severed ties, didn’t invite me to your wedding—afraid I’d stick my hand up your bodice
Wouldn’t friend me on Facebook, no, your children hadn’t heard of “Big Foot with Asperger’sâ€
You became a fierce opponent of love that makes you jittery like a crystal meth head near Pacman
Of this love, you never wed, never smelled my salty pantyhose after synagogue
Or let us ride to Coney Island to eat brackish hot dogs
Or message me with a penguin because they shit all over the Arctic
Or laugh at lights falling in a drive-in theater
Let’s coalesce our minds like one of Heidegger’s theories
Let me seize the delicacy of your poetry—though not Elizabeth Bishop or Sylvia Plath, you play with Robert Lowell
We are two birds in a feeder where Mother puts berries
A spell pours over my body, makes me eat red velvet cake, and I gulp down the icing
Each year you come like waves hitting the beach in Provincetown
Young tiger lilies open, but I can’t see those orange birds my father loved
I listen to the BBC where pregnant 14-year-olds become Olympic wrestlers
My soul is diving in peroxide—divided thoughts that don’t congeal
I conquered you once, not by kissing, but drinking along Amsterdam Avenue—a glistening blight in your face made me red
We hummed and giggled for an “A†in poetry with that grey-haired Walrus who idolized William Carlos Williams
He gave you a recommendation and said I’d be more suited as a cult leader
You cried in the cab, thinking of boys who said I was fat, though they talk with me still
And I met your brothers who did not put prunes in bottles but were prunes in bottles
Each year you spat on my words, which blinked in the night like a neon sign where I would have married you
I am alone now, surrounded by memories that propel me
And my skeletons are awake with music
Eleanor Levine‘s writing has appeared in more than 50 publications, including Fiction, Evergreen Review, Fiction Southeast, Dos Passos Review, Monkeybicycle, Barely South Review, The Denver Quarterly, Pank, and others; forthcoming work in SRPR (Spoon River Poetry Review). Levine’s poetry collection, Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria, was recently released by Unsolicited Press (Davis, California). She is a copy editor and lives with her dog in Philadelphia, PA.
