Fiction   Essays   Poetry  The Ten On Baseball Chapbooks In Memory






Elise Levitt



Lengua

I lean in to smell your hair,
Orange as pencil paint,
The color of a forest fire--

And in my expectation
I smell a classroom
And a stirred up hearth.

You arrived at my door
in the same car you left me in
The last time that we spoke

We argued
Stacked up insults
starting small with tinder wit
snapping in the wind
and then heaped up more sturdy stuff
and then cut timber
from a distant ground

I stop at every centimeter
of your skin
white as a blizzard
Or a blank space on a page
And I am lost
in signing my name
with my fingers on your back

I do not speak your tongue
I do not have your tongue
But you teach me by touch
how to burn our notes
to midnight.





©2008 by Elise Levitt

Elise Levitt is a graduate of Hofstra University, where she was a student of English and creative writing.


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