by Michael Levan

What was it made you
            stick a fingertip in your mouth,
searchingly, as if you could sweep
            stubborn words off your tongue,
write them in air and answer the man’s
            pepperminted question?
Remembering how I’d wake you to watch
            December’s first snow, our foreheads
burning against living room window’s cold
            as midnight came and you begged to see us
through the morning? What did you,
            star-bright and tongue-tied, want most then?
All I meant was to keep you
            close. All I wanted was to listen
while you whispered what
            could make you happiest.
We walked home from Sears,
            your wool-mittened hand
scratching mine, bare and wind-chapped,
            pulling me under streetlamps’
yellowed ovals, our shadows drawing
            out long and faint, until
one flickered and went blank. An angel,
            you said as you turned to run
and I went cold, high above us
            the shy new moon ghosted.

                                      Nikon 35

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Michael Levan’s poems have appeared recently in Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, American Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, Dialogist, and Heron Tree, as well as Cutbank’s 40th anniversary anthology and Southern Poetry Anthology VI: Tennessee. He teaches writing at the University of Saint Francis and lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his wife, Molly, and son, Atticus.

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by Michael Levan

I’ve heard this music before:
          white water’s roar over dam’s edge,
                batter of limbs caught between rocks
                       chiseled smaller and smoother each day
                            I’ve been alive, each day after,
                                 until they give way and let everything go
                                       downstream, carried along with fish, all mouth
                                            and rainbow, leaping from now clear water

All the water that came with such power
    and so suddenly I woke to shut tight my sons’
        windows, the screen door thwacking its jamb,
                 so we might again disappear night into morning.
                     Water that sewers and riverbanks couldn’t keep
                           from basement or our Desoto Wagon’s floorboards,
                                that swallowed slowly every storefront on Main
                                     and we canoed to Kowalski’s Market for loaf
                                of bread, peanut butter, four Cokes to hold
                           fast against all we’d soon lose: Duomatic washer-dryer
                     I’d saved for all year for our anniversary,
                 couch and wooden floors rotted through, everything
        I’d replace with late night and weekend overtime—

It all became such white
   noise when I found on top bedroom shelf,
         far in back, all the letters I wrote a continent away,
             photos and M.’s report cards, R.’s crayoned
                    family portrait where the three of them<
                           smiled under golden sun and crafted a castle
                                  of sand while I looked out over ocean waves
                                     beating lower and lower on the shore,
                           their music receding as water’s always does.

                                                                  Herco Imperial 

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Michael Levan’s poems have appeared recently in Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, American Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, Dialogist, and Heron Tree, as well as Cutbank’s 40th anniversary anthology and Southern Poetry Anthology VI: Tennessee. He teaches writing at the University of Saint Francis and lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his wife, Molly, and son, Atticus.

The post Michael Levan appeared first on Tampa Review.