A Poem by Heller Levinson

Manitou

                          (Winter/12

 

brown weep warps the earth

                                         homeowners rake

groom the ground

                                vegetal shroud

covering → the covered the coveted the cosseted

lymph brocade

 

rulings administered through beams of a solar canonical the leaf

suspended for months in licentious tease blushes, bruises with color, with a crimson erotic fervor, then lets go, releases, anthems the soil, the grass, the rock, . . . the pulled down things

 



s(or)(au)cering nutrients

             --allocation allot alight alit

concupiscence wearied

                                     (some will survive the Winter, some will not

sturdiness laced with lamentation, ... oblongs pathos,

underbellies melancholy

the considerations have time to harden, to frost, to ice

leaves await their orders

 



 

not retreat          but entrenchment unthreading        baring

cold disrobement

robust exposure

trees peeled to skeletal gasp

strike skyward

souse-calendric surreptition performs

a squat           shearing

to silhouette             the language

hardy, lean, ...

noun-things

 



month to month

soon it will be February

clasp burnish

mouth to mouth

a month is a mouth opens & closes

with less frequency

 

the tree tidy in its time-li-ness, in the long longitude of speculation, absentees the cursory, the provisional is pronounced, a stuck in the ground, a struck upon gourd, the components that ‘make it work,’comfortably furtive

the fleet protecting their knowing

 



 

this season of no leaf

of little splash

-- the hunkering

thick & not without pleasure

 

 

 

Heller Levinson lives in NYC where he studies animal behavior. He has published in over a hundred journals and magazines including Alligatorzine, The Cartier Street Review, Counterexample Poetics, ditch poetry, First Literary Review-East, Hunger, Jacket,The Jivin’ Ladybug, Mad Hatters’ Review, Mad Swirl, Mid-June, Moria, Omega, Otoliths, Poets for Living Water, Skidrow Penthouse, Street Cake Magazine, Sugar Mule, Sulfur, Talisman, Tears In The Fence, The Wandering Hermit, The Toronto Quarterly, A Trunk Full of Delirium, Venereal Kittens, and Wood Coin. His publication, Smelling Mary (Howling Dog Press, 2008), was nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Griffin Prize. Additionally, he is the originator of Hinge Theory.
His latest book publication, January 2012, is from stone this running, Black Widow Press, order from www.blackwidowpress.com,

Or Amazon.