Four Poems
Still Life
Not yet
ready but soon
to ripen
farmers’ market
peaches in
a low aubergine
bowl before
a jug of
rippled glass
cold
glistening black.
That’s iced
coffee, I said,
and for a
second thought,
Could life
get much better
than this? I
mean, short of
a plague-free
existence, a
peaceable king-
dom, a healthy
infusion of
many many dollars
into my meager
depleted accounts?
From Top to Bottom
Headaches
Earaches
Heartaches
Stomachaches
Huaraches
For the Birds
for J.H.
First light birds stirring
awakened now I
no longer dreaming
hear mourning
doves’ hollow fluting
and robins’ excited
commenting on
the onset of spring.
Then there’s the one
forever sounding
dire like a rusty hinge
unexpectedly not
implying impending
disaster or doom
but holding forth as if
it were a demigod
with a sent-from-heaven
song. Thanks for that
and for taking the icy silence
of winter, burning
with uncertainty, away
A Gloss
This is what I have so far
though it’s all subject
to change, needs
a better ending, maybe
more of a middle, something
dramatic, perhaps, like
an argument against
ambivalence, depending
on the day and
my disposition, I like it
or don’t, have no idea
who I’m thanking
in the closing or earlier
professing profound
affection for, but actually
seriously and/or really,
what do you care, reading
this in Nyack at night
among the cast of shadows?
Steve Levine
Steve Levine is a poet whose writing is primarily collected in A Blue Tongue; Three Numbers, with Jim Hanson; and Pure Notations (Toothpaste Press) and The Cycles of Heaven and To and For (Coffee House Press). His work can also be found in numerous anthologies and magazines. Keep an eye out for In the Hall of Arms There Is No Legroom, forthcoming from Idiosyncratic & Epigrammatic.
Kathryn Lynch
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Kathryn Lynch received her undergraduate degree from William Smith College in Geneva, NY, and an MFA at the University of Pennsylvania in 1990. She was awarded the NYSCA/NYFA artist Fellow in Painting in 2018. She has been invited to Skowhegan, Yaddo, The Marie Walsh Foundation and The Vermont Studio Center. Since earning her MFA, Lynch has held solo exhibitions and participated in well over thirty group shows both nationally and internationally. Her work is in the permanent collections of the University of California Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA and Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN, as well as many corporate collections, including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and the Millennium Art Collection in the Ritz Carlton, Battery Park, in NYC. The artist lives in Catskill, NY, and works in a curated artist campus called Foreland.