Status Updates From What Work Is: Poems

“They’re / all asleep, all the windows from here / to the end of the world are open, / I can hear the even breathing / of all that is wordless and final.”

“You asked for a home, you crossed / the earth, you sat speechless, / you questioned the closed door, / ‘Are you there?’ No one answered / because all the time it was you.”

I’m. Speechless. ‘Burned’ is killing me, one section at a time. In a beautiful way.

“‘You’ve begun to separate the dark from the dark.’”

“This / is dirt, a filled hole of earth, stone / that says return to stone, a broken fence / that mumbles Keep Out, air above nothing, / air that cannot imagine sweet duties / of wildflowers and herbs, this is cheap, / common, course, what you pass by / every day in your car without a thought, / this is an ordinary grave.”

almost made me cry

Levine's tone is so much goofier and more ironic in Section 2! It's so much more pointed