The Other Voice presents Julia B. Levine and Jennifer K. Sweeney reading their poetry at The Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, 27074 Patwin Road, Davis, California 95616, on Monday, May 7th, at 7:30pm. James Lee Jobe will host. There will be an open reading following the poets. This is a free event. Call 530-750-3514 for details.
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Julia B. Levine has received numerous awards and grants in poetry, including the Discovery/the Nation award, the Tampa Review Prize in Poetry for her second full-length collection of poems, titled, Ask, and the Anhinga Prize in Poetry, for her first book, Practicing for Heaven. Her third book, tentatively titled, In the Mud Room of Existence, is due out this fall from University of Tampa Press. She received her Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley in 1989 in clinical psychology. She lives and works in Davis.
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Jennifer K. Sweeney is a teacher and writer in San Francisco. She won the 2006 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and her book, Salt Memory,was published last November. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Vermont College. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in: Hayden’s Ferry Review, Barrow Street, Passages North, New York Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, RUNES, subtropics and elsewhere. She was recently awarded a Cultural Equities Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.
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Bathtime at the Children's Shelter
by Julia B. Levine
and I'm trying to be brave, to dab his penis
with this towel, to unfold his twisted arm
and rub the inside dry.
Last week, they wanted me to say
whether it was better if a man or woman
held him down, while the doctor checked
how many times he'd been torn apart.
And sure I'm paid to live this close
to the dirt of what's been done,
but I don't know about these red scabs
exploding across this child's skin.
Or how he sits on the toilet, thin as a rail,
trembling from the cold, and speaks
as if he's fine. Go ahead,
he tells me cheerfully,
just let the good one help the bad,
and together we fish his crippled hand
through the pajamas his father gave to him.
Power Rangers, he says, and smiles.
Annie, I nearly said to his favorite aide,
But we don't talk
about how little is coming clean.
And though the good in me
seems a worn-out rag, I'm nodding
as he tells me his father wants him back,
and kneeling as I lift his legs, one by one,
into the pajama legs. And he's leaning, briefly
on my shoulder, trusting me to carry,
for just a moment, the blessed
and shaming lesson
we've been asked to live.
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Of Gravity And Will
by Jennifer K. Sweeney
A baby was crawling out
a window this morning.
I stood beneath, ready to catch,
shouting to her in broken
Spanish. Finally, the mother
came and we were all saved.
The plump head, heavy
as a ripe mango on a branchlet,
stayed in my mind all day
and I kept running
to catch a falling book, a pencil,
a wadded up sheet of paper
sailing toward the trash.
When Justin shouted
Katie loves me!
in our kindergarten class,
I dashed to grasp the words
like yellow flowers
dropping from his grin.
At the end of the day
I slumped home,
my pockets packed
with voices and leaves,
and stood on the balcony,
the way I stand
outside my own life
shouting in Chinese
trying to catch poems.
