{"id":6679,"date":"2019-11-23T15:16:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T15:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=6679"},"modified":"2020-02-04T12:32:41","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T12:32:41","slug":"3-poems-toni-mergentime-levi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=6679","title":{"rendered":"THREE POEMS – Toni Mergentime Levi"},"content":{"rendered":"

MILK<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMilk arrives like a blessing in my dreams\u2014
\nblue-white as a glacial waterfall from a far-off thaw.
\nIn my most joyous dream, a precious rare appearance,
\nI am old\u2014old as I am now. But suddenly, my breasts
\nare filled with milk again and waking I remember
\n 
\nthe neonatal ward, where my full-term bilirubin baby
\nlooked like some blue-ribboned, beefy best-in-show.
\nIn reality, of normal size, my jaundiced giantess
\ndwarfed the pink wrinkled heartbreaking preemies
\nriddled with tubes and sensors in their Isolettes.
\n 
\nThey sent me home in tears, bereft, without my baby\u2014
\nblindfolded in her fish tank under therapeutic light,
\nwithout me (impossible!)\u2014her only known universe.
\nFor two unrelenting days at home, my milk dripped,
\nuseless as my love. For two years after, she drank her fill.
\n 
\nMilk courses through my dappled world of dream.
\nMy breasts are swollen, tender, nipples tipped in red.
\nMy milk is a river flowing to the land of tiny babies.
\nAll\u2014now all can emerge from their boxes, alive.
\nThose who said I wouldn’t have enough were wrong.
\n <\/p>\n

\n

 
\nROUNDUP<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nI walked through a field just sprayed with herbicide.
\nFound out later, didn’t know at the time.
\nA pregnant neighbor, alerted early, got out of town.
\nBut I didn’t sense the stealthy carcinogens
\nsuffusing my system, still don’t know their insidious plans.
\n 
\nI’ve tried so hard to suss out where the mugger lurks,
\nthe track of the careening truck, the cracks
\nin concrete. How I’ve wished for a well-trained rat
\nto sniff out all potential minefields in my life.
\nI scrub melons, wear subway gloves.
\n 
\nWho could imagine that three days after 9\/11,
\nwhen shifting winds blew the awful ashes
\nof the fallen towers and the dust of the dead
\nnorthwards to the aerie I call home, that I would
\n(and did) throw open my windows to let my brethren in.
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n               Note: Roundup ™ is a Monsanto herbicide.<\/em>
\n <\/em>
\n 
\n_______________________________________________________________________
\n 
\nTIME STRETCHED OUT\u2026<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nthat August when my father died \u2212
\nlike the summer I turned twelve
\nand my knee started to go soft,
\nto pull apart, until the doctor
\nbraced it straight for seven weeks,
\nwhile pulp knit into bone.
\n 
\nWhen my father’s legs gave way,
\nas he trudged to buy the paper,
\nthe pavement cracked his jaw and watch.
\nIn the cancer ward, I wound the stem each day,
\nas mornings and evenings fused in pain,
\nand he hid his hands beneath the sheets.
\n 
\nAs Father’s life thinned and dimmed,
\nMother screamed at the cicadas
\nwhirring and ticking in the endless heat,
\nlike invisible clocks from another planet
\nwith multiple suns and
\nyears of a thousand days.
\n 
\nTime unwound that summer \u2212
\nreturned me to the weeks of nightmares
\nthat my knee had turned to flour and water.
\nAnd Father came to soothe me into calmer sleep.
\nWhen I kissed him hours before he died,
\nhe whispered he was not afraid.
\n 
\nAs old age courteously extends
\nits clich\u00e9d bony hand to me,
\nI’ve replayed this farewell
\nlike fingers fraying and fraying
\nthe silky edging of a baby blanket
\nwhen the lights go out.
\n 
\n 
\nToni Mergentime Levi is a poet and librettist. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections: White Food<\/em> (2016) and Watching Mother Disappear<\/em> (2009), both from Mayapple Press, and For A Dancing Bear<\/em> (1995) from Three Mile Harbor. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, Crosscurrents, Confrontation, Kansas Quarterly, California Quarterly<\/em> and Apalachee Quarterly<\/em>, as well as online, on radio (WBAI-FM) and in anthologies. Toni has been awarded residencies at VCCA, Schloss Wiepersdorf (Germany), Konstepidemin (Sweden), MacDowell, Djerassi, Ucross, Millay and Saltonstall. Thanksgiving, one of two operas and several other collaborations with composer Paul Alan Levi, won a Grand Prize for New Opera from the National Music Theater Network. A collaboration with composer Charles Fussell premiered at the Tanglewood Music Center and will be released on a recording by the Boston Modern Opera Project. A native New Yorker, Toni lives in Manhattan. Her website is www.tonilevi.com.   The poem “Milk” has been previously published in her collection, White Food.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MILK     Milk arrives like a blessing in my dreams\u2014 blue-white as a glacial waterfall from a far-off thaw. In my most joyous dream, a precious rare appearance, I am old\u2014old as I am now. But suddenly, my breasts are filled with milk again and waking I remember   the neonatal ward, where my [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[332,149],"class_list":["post-6679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-breastfeeding-mums","tag-wikicommons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6679"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7331,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6679\/revisions\/7331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}