“The Birth and Death Corn,” by Dana Levin

Poetry faculty member Dana Levin was recently featured in Guesthouse. Read an excerpt of “The Birth and Death Corn” below:

The Birth and Death Corn

a ballad

Yesterday I went to see Jensen and while I was on the table, he told me the story of the Birth and Death corn. While he held the back of my head, probing my fucked-up neck with his fingers. While I was coming off S.’s grief because J. left her, D.’s grief because R. left him, because D.’s father died and grief spun out reactive until he stood in tears at the bottom of my stairs. I’d had a laundry basket in one arm and D. in the other, he was about to vanish into a cell in Christ in the Desert, my Jewish Buddhist friend. And I was feeling so scared of walking into the future – when the present felt so dark and changed —

 

Read this poem in its entirety, as well as another, here: https://www.guesthouselit.com/i9-levin-dana-poetry