Shams' Muse

  Poem 22. Global Mala I dedicate my practice and my poem to the girl on the mat beside me. She squirrelled her glasses in a sneaker, and sat straight and erect beside me, Her hands clasped in her lap. Her ribs swelling and collapsing with each breath. She wore a jap mala on her wrist which I looked at on every Chaturanga Dandasana, as if counting the beads, the 108 beads, one for every sun salutation. I didn't count after six, but I tried.   Poem 23. Fishbowl The fish swim outside my window, big lips kissing the clouds, fins swaying backwards and forwards, tails navigating left and right. I live in a castle with a drawbridge that opens and closes, powered by a motor that lies beneath the road, beneath the sewer pipes. The bravest fish swims in my window, an angelfish, it doesn't notice me lying on my bed, but swims out the door, and out the drawbridge, back to the air. Poem 24. Pearl If you would give me a chance, I would pry open your heart, And show you that there...

Poem 15. Empty Apartment This apartment is not for rent. Not for you, at any rate. You visited it before, I remember you. I walked you through the rooms, cleaned it through the cupboards before you came, scrubbed the fridge, repainted the walls. I showed you the water pressure, the light switches, the closets. I told you how happy I was here, the neighbours are quiet. You loved it. It was perfect. You said you'd take it and I waited for your call. Waited, waited, waited. Others called and I said I had rented it out. Rented my apartment. But you never called back. The apartment is empty. Don't come back now and ask to see it again.   ©Rachel Levine 2007 Poem 16. I can’t sleep he says and I don't remember my dreams either. What was the last one? He runs his finger around the rim of his glass. I dreamed I couldn't sleep and I was watching late night television. The sign behind him is for a band that played last week. It was as real as this. This could be a dream, he says. ...

  The New Math part III . The unknown   I met Danny on-line.   I met Danny because I liked his myspace pictures. In one, he was holding an axe, with one foot resting on a tree stump. He was wearing a bright blue shirt, glasses, and a toque. He looked like an extremely scrawny lumberjack. In another picture shot from above, he was looking up while sawing a log. He was squinting into the camera and his teeth stuck out like a rabbit’s. He struck me as unintentionally manly.   I emailed him, “Nice axe .” He emailed me back. After about a month of periodic correspondence on myspace, Danny told me he was going to Boston for several months on an internship. We didn’t email. In fact, we lost touch altogether. In the interim, I met a man and had a tragic romance.   I emailed Danny again when my tragic romance ended. He said, “I thought we broke up as myspace friends.” I wrote back, “True love forever.”   We kept in touch regularly after that. Danny began to email me...

  The New Math IV?   Robot Psychology   For a few weeks, I liked a robot psychologist. He didn't reciprocate the sentiment. He sent me an email: I can not give you what you want. I re-read it six times and finally began to cry. I suppose things ended much better in my imagination. In my imagination, things did not end but began.   I wrote the above story for the robot psychologist in question. I told him I would write him a story because he was enthusiastic and encouraging about my art, far more than he was about me. But, now when I read it back to myself, I realize that it is not a story at all, but a poem. So, I am writing a new story for him because he told me I could if I changed his name. But I also wanted him to have the story because it was something I could give to him even though we no longer had contact. The poem is brief and I wanted to write a story about my rage, which was large.   For a few weeks . Let us start with that lie. Because as a writer, I...

  The New Math IV?   Rainer Franz Mendel’s name was composed of three first names. I am always suspicious of people who change their first names, as if they were too flippant about identity, or too fearful to commit to being themselves. With a name change, one could become an entirely new persona in the life of someone already established and steer it in a new direction. Rainer, by accident of his parents’ choices, could alter his identity simply by changing the part of the name with which people addressed him. This fact alone should have clued me in immediately that I would not be dealing with one person, but three, or perhaps even more. It should have clued me in to steer clear, since I am not equipped for storms anymore. But, I often overlook what I need to in pursuit of my ends. Besides, Rainer’s evasions were subtle, and they returned me to a time in my life when I blamed myself for everything, especially the crimes of others.   Rainer was in the hospital when we met...

  Vase by Rachel Levine   I am taking what I thought would be a short cut through a forested part of the city, only it isn’t working as planned. I follow the fence, trying to locate a breach as I walk further and further from my intention. I reflect on the hints and allegations of my life, ruminating on its randomness and my limited abilities to steer and predict outcomes. Everyone has an answer. They closet themselves in the study of scholarly esoterica, enforce a brute Ukranian do or die approach, surrender to cosmic flow, check the position of the retrograde planets, put faith in the orchestration of the higher powers, or refuse to acknowledge anything beyond the most immediate. Their mantras are a temporary litany: Become the most positive person you know, Envision the outcome you want and it will happen, Equanimity, This too shall pass. But I belong to the Church of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and their comfort eventually slides off; I remain stormy and anxious, ...

  The Tribe by Rachel Levine   A cat slinks along the ground in the bushes near the ball park, its belly milimeters off the earth as it moves forward with the precision of a machine. The focus of a cat is absolute. Every muscle carries its intent, every fibre of its being pointed gracefully towards a specific end. I watch it stalk down a smaller creature, while my dog pisses on a tree and misses. My dog and I come from a different tribe. We consider ourselves the protagonists of our own buddy flick, though he is always the Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote. We stand ankle deep in the summer clover, focused on our respective temporary sensory enticements. I watch the morning light beam through a stained glass window formed by overlapping green leaves, while he munches a found bone. My mind unpacks a series of considerations about the nature of existence and morality, about inaccuracy in the struggle towards the ideal. Bored, he stretches out in the grass, waiting for me to cease m...

  A Size Six in a Size Two World by Rachel Levine My best friend just bought a skirt that is so tight you can read her lips. Yes, those lips. Why did she buy it? She wasn’t auditioning for the role of prostitute, after all. It was a size 1-2. She has at last entered the magically, golden world of the size twos. Her rotten day, her errant boyfriend, her insane boss – none of them mattered because she was a size two. When you are a size two, don’t you know that doors spring open and rain drops fall around you? That taxis don’t charge you and that suddenly your shit has a nice apricot scent? There’s no need to iron clothing because it no longer wrinkles. And steps turn to slides when you’re walking down them and escalators when you’re walking up them. The prices on everything are now 10% less. Who knew that such a simple change of clothing size could completely transform one’s life from imperfect to perfect, from flawed to flawless. Apparently it can.       ©Rachel Levi...

  The Rise and Fall of Little Gem Records by Rachel Levine These were the happiest days of my life and it didn’t matter how certainly, how securely I fell, coming down hard, coming down fast, coming down with the shakes or paranoia like trying to slough off a three month long bender or maybe it was more than a three month long bender at that point because there was a lot of liquor and other odd recreational pharmaceutical things, but hitting that wall, slamming face first into the bricks, taking some punches, swallowing my pill, isn’t it ironic – wait, no not that song, but it ended being in the shitter or the crapper and reaching rock bottom would probably be reaching up the way things were at that point, and yes it was bound to end, coming to its inevitable, humbling conclusive decrescendo, the furious march of time trampling me along to obscurity and my inevitable disappearance, yes my time came, and I lay down with dogs came up with fleas, and all great things rise and fall inc...

  Flipping Out by Rachel Levine “Why don’t you write happy stories?” my mother asks me. She’s worried about me. Everyone is worried about me. “I’m worried about you,” she says. “Because my life is my life,” I say. Sometimes, at some of the extremely low times, not entirely unlike now, I think I want to change it. But, mostly I don’t. Of course I would like to be a happier person, a more together person. But improvement comes at a cost. It entails making lists, being on a strict schedule or trying to impose structure and regularity. At present, walking the dog three times a day, brushing my teeth, showering, and teaching my ¾ course load at a local college represent the limit of commitment I can handle before I start forgetting to turn off the stove when I leave the house or hopping on the subway before I realized I’ve left my car at the supermarket two days ago. When burdened with obligations, I go to pieces in ways that other people would at first call charming until they must pay...

  Interstate by Rachel Levine   Driving, driving, driving. Seven hours now. Past the mailboxes of America the beautiful. Small proud towns and trailer parks with flowers planted in empty cans. I can be steady in my thoughts, steady on the road. I can also be lost on the road, lost in my thoughts. The town is Peru and the Interstate must be somewhere to my right. She asked me, “What are you driving now?” and looked at my car, “Do you remember Matt drove a Subaru? It was silver.” I didn’t remember. I didn’t even remember his face. “He hated me,” I told her, and that is my concise but complete summary of four years. “He didn’t hate you,” she said, laughing, “He never hated you.” She picked up her baby who was tugging at her shorts. She has a baby now. Most of them have babies now. In Peru , I try to call him up. The only thing that comes back to me is his voice, its gravel and pitch, low and coaxing in my ear, but I cannot recollect words. “I’ve lived so many lives since then,” I...

  Girls by Rachel Levine You’d have thought St. Theresa herself had been beaten from the way the school climate changed after Allison Panofsky ended up in the hospital. Girls who couldn’t pick her out in a police line up were crying as they walked through the halls and there were all kinds of rumors that spread through class about how she was found and who did it. Things one would expect, obviously. Everything after school was halted at exactly 4:00, so we could all get home in broad daylight. Police stood at every entrance, two at the gym entrance, complete with guns and hats and styrofoam cups of coffee. Local therapists descended on us like a flock of angels ready and willing to administer soothing words and a free pass out of class. We had three auditorium meetings to discuss topics like acceptance and bullying. Even the teachers spoke more softly, more kindly. The reporters from TV stations and newspapers stood outside the school fence, ready to pounce on the first few girls a...