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 | ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
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| Dana Levin |
Dana Levin's first book, In the Surgical Theatre, was awarded the 1999 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize and went on to receive many honors, including the 2003 PEN/Osterweil Award. A 2004 recipient of both a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress and an Emerging Woman Writer's Award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Levin teaches in the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College and directs the Creative Writing Program at College of Santa Fe. Her latest book, Wedding Day, was published by Copper Canyon Press in May 2005. |
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| Styx
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by Dana Levin |
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You put a bag around your head and walked into the river.
You
walked into the river with a bag around your head and you were
never dead
game on the banks of your
mental styx
for the double
audience
of smoke—
—
You pressed a coin into his palm and stepped across the water.
You
stepped across the water with a hand on his arm and he was
silent and kind as you
shoved off, toward the smoky coils
of the greek-seeming dead—
You’d been trying to sleep.
Found yourself here
in the mythocryptic land—
The river
—
had widened to a lake. You were anchored
in the shallow boat
by his faceless weight—
And on the green shore you could see their vapored
residue, how they could
smell it, those two―if you
slit your wrist you could make them speak.
If you
—
slit your wrist you might be able to sleep.
Grief.
Grief.
Handing you back
your coin. |
Copyright © Dana Levin. Used with permission of the author. |
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