Sylvia Levinson , Poet

Writing for the past eleven years, Sylvia Levinson has continued to hone her craft, offering the quiet strength of a poet serious about words and language. Her poetry is informed by nature, motherhood and a lot of life experience. Sylvia has taken advantage of the dynamic writing community in San Diego and studied at The Writing Center during its five year existence, and under the tutelage of Steve Kowit at Southwestern College and Ryan Griffith at Grossmont College. Spoken word participation includes a recent solo feature at Claire de Lune, and features with other poets at D.G. Wills and Open Door Books. Her publishing credits include City Works, Tidepools, Acorn Review, Cotyledon, Poetic Matrix, Magee Park Poets, The Writing Center Anthologies and a forthcoming issue of Snowy Egret. In gratitude for the gift of poetry and the belief in the power of this art to inform, educate, heal and touch the lives of others, she has been a volunteer with the Border Voices Poetry Fair since its inception in 1993 and was a founding steering committee member of the San Diego Writers’ Cooperative. Poems by Syliva Levinson

LINKAGES

If the life and the soul are sacred, the human body is sacred
—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

They always look so elegant,
those line drawings, black ink,
reds and golds in The Kama Sutra.
His turban never askew or unwound,
her sleek ebony hair, not one strand undone.
Their robes, discreetly pulled aside or
they are naked except for their sumptuous jewelry,
anklets, bracelets, ropes of emeralds, rubies,
pearls, draping their smooth, taut bodies.
Position flawless, they Ride the Tiger,
acrobatic joining of linga and yoni.

You and I, voluptuaries on rumpled sheets, sweat.
My mascara smears. Our ample flesh, all
moguls and crevices, freckled, dotted with moles.
The scent of the sea, bread rising, fills the room.
Our juices, thicker than tears, glisten on our thighs.
Inelegant and satisfied, regaining breath, we rest
in the classic pose: arms flung wide, your leg draped over mine.
The pulse behind your knee messages contentment.

BLUES

Lela Gibb stands on the stage,
hand mic nearly kissing her,
she moans, the low-down groans,
swivels her hips, wide hips, big mama hips.
Thighs outlined in pink jersey, she
opens her throat, shouts, growls
‘bout her Big Time Daddy, Long-Gone.
Mesmerized, I’m a blueswoman with the best of ‘em -
Katie Webster, Mama Thornton, Etta James.
But God didn’t give me brassy pipes
to sing my rage,
my coffee-grindin’,
rock-me-baby,
backbone-rollin’ blues.
I got words on paper,
great growlin’ words,
groanin’ words,
low moanin’ baby, baby, baby
lick your lips, swivel your hips,
raise that itch-in-your-groin words.
Bessie Smith’s empty-bed,
spinnin’ head,
yeah-I’ve-got-‘em
blues

OUT OF PLACE, JUST IN TIME

I
I was caught in the trench between two generations:
Beatniks and hippies, protestors against war,
and the young draftees who were sent to Vietnam;
disciples of Erhard and Leary,
Malcolm and Germaine;
intimates of Miles, Jimi and Janis.

While Ginsberg and Kesey wrote
Anger and Alienation,
I was rushing a college sorority.
While others wore tie-dye or camouflage,
I wore Shetland sweaters and Bermuda shorts.

While marchers linked arms, lay down
in the streets of Selma and in front of nuclear plants,
while they changed the rules and tried to change the world,
I drove the carpool to pre-school, entertained my husband’s clients,
drank Bloody Marys at brunch, cheap Chablis almost anytime.

II
Now, on the verge of my sixty-third birthday,
this urge to catch up, fill in the blanks,
drink the knowledge others gained,
while I put my mind on hold at twenty-one;
suburban wife, suburban life

Now, I buy a Coltrane album -
listen to it all the way through;
feel, for the first time, the man
behind the primitive wails,
now that my mind knows how to hear.

Now, I read Kafka, "The Metamorphosis,"
and Camus, "The Stranger,"
understand the symbolism and metaphor,
of alienation, transformation,
now that I have learned how havoc can be
unleashed by my own mind,
that inaction is action.

III

Regrets? How could I have known
intellect would hunger so, what words and worlds
there were to be devoured?
Now on the edge of sixty-three,
they wait for me: films and plays,
symphonies and galleries,
music and philosophy.
And books and books and books.
So much more to learn, to say.
So much poetry to write.

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