Research: Journals
The Journal
Past Issues
27.2
Jeffrey Levine
What Late at Night He Wants from EveInseparable—you know this—yet you drag me to the rim
of your mouth, the ripple that is your skin and the ripple
beneath your skin. I’ll wait for you where sigh joins
bone as in the old days inside the earth’s brink,
follow the length of every newer world,
serve up that “us” you think so much of—mossy
and numb with want—so you rest your knees
here in the seven downfalls of the infinite slope,
and so they hurt us less you die with laughter and shake
with pleasure, in tremor. Offer the puffed friedcake, flour
with butter, with butter. You’re teasing the peasant in me
who never forgets on waking to kiss your mouth, each breast,
each breast again, please oh truculent God, thus
you lead this poor man through the wilderness
with his useless eyes of the alien vigil, and you listen
while I hum my bubblings over, or wait still—
wait, until there’s almost nothing missing—
and my heart ignites with wanting and the grasses bend
and turn to gold, and time breaks free its mortal leash,
illusions singe my beard, and something bends my knee.
