THE LAKE
I should not have been
Putting all my weight
On that slick metal.
Can’t make something go down
Once it’s up, I mean.
The lake crept up
Pawless.
It walked on its stumps.
I don’t know the evening beyond what happens to me
And its characters
Who are known, cast against the wall
Even as they conceal themselves.
What matters is the air
Piped in from beyond the veil:
It comes out of your cushions
And it gestures beyond
To something that did not happen.
But it could have happened,
I mean I hate this part of the
City it is my place of
Anguish. Like I need to
Give the yellow book to
Anne-Marie and find my
Social security card. You used to say
To me as a child rigid in bed
Let the water rush over your toes,
Your muscles, let it erase the words.
Relax your pointer finger. Your
Index. Your ring, your pinky.
Put it down, baby, put it down.
P.U.F.
I am writing against my hunger
I am writing to the Public Universal Friend, and I’m scared
Friend I saw in your smile an expectation of pain
Your curls
I want to swaddle you in my contemporary senses
My ruffled Friend
You who have been near death
You can explain to me
Why when someone’s sick
We say I was sick too
Does it help
In bed with my fever I’m beyond myself
Like you
The blood runs like fishes down the face
You cut the image with meaning
Then you walked out the door
Mild
Daytime barking
MARY
Falconing out of the sidewalk
The phone beckons
Oil on the statue
These people love you
Despite you saying the same things
Or rather the way you say them
Reminds them of the first time
When they were just getting that first air
Of loving you
Mary you’re a cloud tiger
Your love will come
You’ve been a good tiger
You abandoned the slink angel
The clean flower
It’s time for you to act your age
You woke and saw
An opium zeppelin
You were half of a brass instrument
He was speaking through you
He was cleaning you out
Close to the chest of life you
Bled all over the universe
In his arms you
Went all the way off
Morgan Levine is a poet from Houston, Texas. They live and work in Brooklyn.