Poem: Levis

This piece originally appeared in Chelsea, a legendary magazine that published Sylvia Plath. Sadly, Chelsea has gone dormant. I hope it returns!

Owl

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Levis

blue denim,
oceanic, faded field,
furrowed yet soft,
taut from a frozen writhe of threads
eating each others’ tails
through hypnotic loops,
minutiae that cascade,
waterfall cleansing ankles and waists,
flexing with skin and muscle,
dancing with strides.

you are even more intimate
with my knees when dissolved
into fluff, unraveled
toward the memory
of being a plant, when metal fins
swam through waves of soil,
and you wandered an island
lush and flouncy green,
paraded by trickles of sun,
until one day there arrived
tin locusts fumed by oil.

drowned, dismembered,
strangled and spun, you came
to me on a shelf once resinous,
under a grid of false noon;
and i purchased you with
woebegone paper that wore an
old man’s political smile.
now, who is more threadbare,
you or i, sitting in our park,
speckled by morning through a bough?
and do you regret, i wonder,
not being fashionable or
a farmer’s bib, or
a rollicking blur atop
a motorcycle?