John Levy


To Assemble an Absence


Mother, I keep trying.

In the title I say “an,” not
“Your.” You

titled me. I don’t know, I’m

guessing, but I’d guess you were the
one who decided upon

John. Not that I could ask you or

Dad, you’re both gone. I miss
him, too. I assemble

both of you

often, standing here inside
my 70 years

of being

a child inside your kingdoms. Yes,
Mom, I’d say

you were a king too, though

I never had to kiss your ring or his.
Once, as a child, you let me

take your wedding ring and I walked

out into the Minneapolis back yard’s
green grass and held

the small diamond up to the sun.



Email to My Daughter Allyson, 5/21/22


The Danish word minderne means “the memories.”
It looks a bit like mind earn, but listen to it on a computer.

It sounds like “me-namm-a” if the a is long. But
you will hear it differently, I’m sure, if you

find it. You and I often find the same things
differently, but that’s natural enough. I wonder if ants

hear birdsongs
the same as each other. I doubt it. I’d like to think

ants, working, love to hear birds
singing. In 2013, a “new study” found that young ants

make noise to communicate (article by Carrie Arnold).
Even ant pupae communicated with sound.

I also like to think that ants who aren’t working
enjoy listening to birdsongs. I don’t like to think of ants

who don’t enjoy songs. I suppose that says something
about my worldview. It doesn’t sing that something.

I am happy writing this for you. I am not thinking
of either of us as an ant or a bird. I’m

happy to be your father. I used to sing to you when you
were “little” (though really you were always so alive

I never thought of you as “little”). The memories.



Email to Tamara Tracz


I’ve been thinking over what you said about
how part of why you write fiction is trying to figure out what
it’d be like to be someone else. I wonder

what it would be like to be you reading this.

Do you think, “You have no clue. And you’re
not writing fiction.” I am imagining you, in London, on a
foggy morning, looking for your shadow and thinking

how passersby wonder why you are standing still. “That’s

a good spot,” I say, as I stand beside you, “don’t
move. I’ll make sure no one jostles you. No, I won’t

do that rudely, but merely

by my presence. As you know, because you’ve imagined
how I emotionally and physically inhabit my body, I believe
I can make others

experience my presence as if I were twice my real size.

You aren’t fooled, of course, but this timid
slender man in a black suit has given us both
what he, you, and I would agree is a

‘wide berth.’”



K


If I place it on its
side

with its vertical line horizontal, it makes me

think of rapture
or a line opening its

beak, or a valley’s

self-portrait. Or a two-legged
Table of Contents

upside-down and waiting

for an author to fill its
funnel.



SONNET
                                (with Ken Bolton & Ted Berrigan in mind)

                        
Thank you for taking so much trouble
that didn’t belong to you or him
atop spread-out front pages with headlines
he thinks about the waistlines of shoes and poems
the mild attack of something that gleams
usually barefoot
before proceeding to Paris or, with Ken, to Rome
“It’s a complication,” (last line of “It’s Important”)
sometimes on hoofs
in the neural pathways where song and visions tread
while knowing the verb “think” hardly fits
he tried to not read so he wouldn’t have nightmares
but to a man who polished his black shoes each morning
for reading this, the poet said in a bass voice



Note to Kazuko Nakane


Hi Kazuko,

I think, sometimes, of sentences you’ve
emailed me
because I love the way you write. English

is your second language and you
are a wonderfully clear
writer in English. You remark

about a poem I sent you about my late father:

“It is nice to feel his warmth live in your heart, and that
is a family. I miss my parents for that warmth, who lived
for me, an only child, and continue to live in my heart.”

In another email you write:

“We live in the folds of layers of memories. I can be lost
in time, sometimes, deep in darkness
under the grey clouds of days and days of rain.
Then my mother comes back to me
every day whenever I eat yogurt. She said to me that liquid
in yogurt is good for you, don’t throw it away.”

Your words, Kazuko, are good for me.
I return
to them.



Make It New


Ezra Pound said in an essay
published in 1934. That was

88 years ago now

and 18 years before I was
a human. I’m

continuing on, humanly, today
so

far.

Back when he first
wrote that I imagine the words

NEW AND IMPROVED

were not ubiquitous on all
sorts of boxes on shelves in grocery stores

the way they were in the

1960s when I used to read
all the words my eyes

found

among the colors and
designs that lacked any

letters. I almost never hear “new”

poets refer to Pound. I recall when
my mother’s friend, Jewish

like us, when I was in college, invited

my mother and me over to her
home and then

interrogated me about how any Jew

could read an anti-Semite like Pound.
She sat

across from me, an expensive white carpet
between us. She made collages

that a local gallery tried to sell (I think

mostly they did sell
to her doctor husband’s patients, but

what do I know?). I did not

defend Pound’s beliefs, but if I remember
correctly said I loved some of his writing.

Did she feel defeated? No, she was too self-

self and self, as was I.



Poem with Footnotes1  and Emerging Titles


The Polish word for footnote is notatka and the no it begins with
sounds (in Polish) like the English word no although the Polish word for no

is nie (which doesn’t sound like the English word knee) and notatka
makes no reference (as far as I can tell2) to anatomy, which foot

-note does. It is near midnight and this poem
is now re-titled “Moonlight on the Footnotes” and a moment later

its title is “Notatka for Anna.” Some of the footnotes stand
in stockinged feet, others are barefoot, while a few

walk on sandy beaches in high heels.3  The sound of the
heels sinking in sand doesn’t sound anything like the name

Anna in Polish or in English or even in French. Footnotes
are rarely non

sequiturs, even at midnight.4  Do footnotes have
a calming effect, function as sedatives? Could one self-medicate

with doses of footnotes?5  Anna, can you believe this is a tribute to you?6  
Each time I read your poem I’m happy. And find something new.

__________________________
¹ A tribute to Anna Matysiak, who has marvelous footnotes in her poem “Indie publisher Anna Matysiak returns home from a reading in Jadzów during the pandemic” in its translation into English, while the poem in its original form, in Polish, has no footnotes because her Polish readers presumably know, for example, that Jadzów is “a Warsaw neighbourhood near the Polish Parliament.”
² In other words, I may be wrong, as I often am when I look online for, say, English to Polish translations or vice-versa (which in Polish is nawzajem).
³ Although not all the footnotes are standing. Some sit, some lie down, one is outside on a pogo stick. But let’s consider the ones who stroll in red high heels, on white sand, pleased to breathe out near the waves.
⁴ What seashells have they found on the moon? No sandcastles either.
⁵ There is little reliable information on the side-effects of medicinal footnotes.
⁶ I’d like to think so, although I may be deceiving myself.




John Levy lives in Tucson.

 
 

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