What Work Is by Philip Levine

Author:Philip Levine [Levine, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76195-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

*

A burned car left in a field

of sassafras, the long green shoots

through the windows and doors where no

doors remain. The kids don’t come by

after school to carve their names

on the dashboard or pull the steering wheel

to avoid the inevitable. Rocks, tires,

cases of empties, an old couch sagging

into weeds, the cushions blooming.

I lived here once, in a house

now gone. A friend visited me

at dusk, and she brought a paper parcel

of cookies tied with a ribbon. Even then

we were scared of the silence that followed

whatever we gave each other. I would

walk her to the bus stop on Second Avenue,

and we’d wait in silence in the dense air

of a March night as slow rain

fell into the last snow. I’d come back

alone, sober, singing to a starless sky,

singing recklessly out of a boy’s

throat, past the darkened rows

of sleeping two storey houses

that have all gone up in smoke.

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