Leveler Poetry Journal
About Leveler Submission Guidelines More Poems

Small Picture

    after a line by Stern

 

Don’t look too much             or it gets tempting

to regret all bouts with life. Then nothing

 

can sit without an undercutting             from the studied dark.

Then the secrets open weirdly        like mutated flowers. Like a tape

 

watched and rewound        too many times—

Each time how.            The jurisdiction of feeling

 

crated me.   Show me

I would beg you            any higher law—

 

Because in any room there’s always

someone who can’t be talked to

 

someone always transfixing like an icon          outlined thick in gilt

and warning.            I know

 

you wouldn’t believe how unholy

but inevitable it was                to want it both ways—




Hanae Jonas