John Levy


My Mother Made Me

after "my mother made me"
by Michael Dennis

Must've been early autumn, 1950, probably Minneapolis.
My mother had just turned 27. My father was also 27.
Their first son was about one-and-a-half.
My mother longed for a daughter.

My father, 27, had fought in, and survived, World War II.
My mother had survived, first, a miscarriage, then a birth.
The miscarriage was a son. Then she had a living son.
She had reason to hope the odds were good for a daughter.

I think that my mother believed she was a survivor.
Did my father care if he had a son or a daughter?
If it were a coin flip, the odds were in my mother's favor.
She had dreams about what she and her daughter would do together.

I never asked my father if he wanted a daughter.
Michael's mother was 15 when she got pregnant.
She wasn't thinking of her future as a mother.
Michael's mother wanted to leave home, go on a honeymoon.

It seems Michael's mother told Michael the story
about being in the back seat of a car with his father.
At 15, she was in love with ideas: the altar, matching kitchen chairs.
My mother, a dozen years older, was also a dreamer.



Yellow Eyes (Tucson, April 7th, 2020)


This morning as I walked on the path around
our yard for the seventh time, when I reached the back

northwest corner where a tall chainlink fence running north
meets the strands of barbed wire

a coyote saw and/or heard me first.

It had been behind a bush, jumped
over the lowest barbed strand into the neighbor's yard. We

is the pronoun we became, easily

close enough to focus on each other's eyes.

Then I didn't move and it opened and closed its big
toothy jaws, its yellow eyes on mine

as several birds in the mesquite trees
sang. I stayed motionless, it opened

and closed its jaws. About three
full

minutes, before it came, slowly,
back into our yard, and stopped. Maybe half-

a-minute of us, motionless again, before
it turned, went back through the barbed wire and

that us, silent, returned permanently to me and it.



Nature, Etc.

". . .nature is but a name for excess; every point in her     
opens out and runs into the more." William James

William James' words do not seem dated.
Is a falling leaf dated before it touches the ground?
Repetition and change = any two days of autumn.
Someone said hummingbirds can see colors we can't even imagine.

Is a falling leaf dated before it touches the ground?
My point is that not only slopes are slippery.
Someone said hummingbirds can see colors we can't even imagine.
How could that someone know something we can't even imagine?

My point is that not only slopes are slippery.
RSVP now or live forever in bewildering complexity.
How could that anyone know something no one can imagine?
Consult your own list of blind spots.

RSVP now or live forever in bewildering complexity.
". . .nature is but a name for excess; every point in her opens out. . ."
In another stanza we will consider rococo allegiances.
Raise your hand if you are not a nature lover. Thank you.

". . .nature is but a name for excess; every point in her opens out. . ."
I pledge allegiance to that which runs into the more.
Raise your hand if you are not a nature lover. I'm not thanking you twice.
In certain places nature appears to favor a rococo touch.

I pledge allegiance to that which runs into the more.
Likewise, to that which strolls into it. Or, stands, well within it.
In certain places nature appears flourishing a rococo touch.
There are also the minimalist stretches, even in spring.



Guest Book for People in My Dreams


Each person will sign in
right before they appear. The book
spread open, on a wooden table
off to the side, with a gold-plated ballpoint pen

plus an assortment of pencils, fountain
pens, and a jar full of paint brushes.
A separate metal table for a palette
and paints. My late parents will write their names

most often. Sometimes my mother will
take a brush and paint her name, cover
the entire page, perhaps at an upward slant, or
horizontal with flowing strokes. My father

will usually write with the gold-plated pen, his signature
elegant
and each time almost
the same. I'll need many volumes, numbered, bound

in thick fabrics with gold years embossed
on spines. I'll keep them on a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf.
I'll be disappointed in anyone who signs illegibly. I'll
happily read the names of the many strangers,

contemplate their handwriting, let their names
evoke and sing. There will be an understanding
that all names will be kept private and the volumes
burned, unread by others, when I die.



Eggs & Thomas Lux, 1974

for Angella Kassube

and Dag T. Straumsvåg

Thomas Lux was the poet in residence at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. He was 27 and I was 23. He was living in a small one-story house near the edge of the campus, over by the little movie theater. I think it was a Saturday when I visited him at his house, not for the first time (though maybe for the second). It was about 11:00 a.m., I'd guess, because I believe I didn't want to barge in early.

I knocked. I don't remember a doorbell. I knocked again. A third time, more knocks, harder. For some reason I don't remember, I was sure he was home. And for another reason I don't remember I thought it would be okay if I tried the door to find out if it was locked. It was not locked. I opened it and called out to him. Silence. I probably yelled the next time, maybe "Hello. Tom?" Nothing.

Was I at the back door? After I opened the door and stepped in, I walked into the kitchen right away. Which is where I saw the eggs. Three of them, splattered on the floor. Not near each other. I stepped around them and entered the little room with a couch, which is where Tom was stretched out, waking up.

He seemed happy enough to see me. He was fully dressed and didn't sit up. After greeting each other I probably suggested I come back another time. Then I asked about the eggs.

"What eggs?"

"There are three broken eggs on the kitchen floor."

"Oh." Pause. "I got home late last night. I must've been practicing juggling."

John Levy's most recent book is Silence Like Another Name (otata's bookshelf, 2019).
 
 
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