—spring wind with its
train of spoons,
kidney-bean shaped
pools, Floridian
humus, cicadas with their
electric appliance hum, cricket
pulse of dusk under
the pixilate gold of the trees, fall’s
finish, snow’s white
afterlife, death’s breath
finishing the monologue Phenomena, The Most Beautiful Girl you
carved the word because you craved the world—
Source: Poetry (September 2012).
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This poem originally appeared in the September 2012 issue of Poetry magazine
Poet Dana Levin grew up in California’s Mojave Desert and earned a BA from Pitzer College and an MA from New York University.
Levin’s collections of poetry include In the Surgical Theatre (1999), Wedding Day (2005), and Sky Burial (2011). Selecting Levin’s manuscript for the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize, Louise Glück praised the work as “sensuous, compassionate, violent, extravagant.” In the Surgical . . .
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