West Trestle Review
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Issues
    • November 2022
    • September 2022
    • July 2022
    • May 2022
    • March 2022
    • January 2022
    • November 2021
    • September 2021
    • July 2021
    • May 2021
    • March 2021
    • January 2021
    • November 2020
    • September 2020
    • July 2020
  • Cross-Ties
  • Silver Tongue Saturdays
  • About
    • Arrivals & Departures
    • Masthead
    • Submit
    • Join Our Team
    • Archive >
      • Jane Beal
      • Beverly Burch
      • Kathleen Gunton
      • Connie Gutowsky
      • Priscilla Lee
      • Irene Lipshin
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Issues
    • November 2022
    • September 2022
    • July 2022
    • May 2022
    • March 2022
    • January 2022
    • November 2021
    • September 2021
    • July 2021
    • May 2021
    • March 2021
    • January 2021
    • November 2020
    • September 2020
    • July 2020
  • Cross-Ties
  • Silver Tongue Saturdays
  • About
    • Arrivals & Departures
    • Masthead
    • Submit
    • Join Our Team
    • Archive >
      • Jane Beal
      • Beverly Burch
      • Kathleen Gunton
      • Connie Gutowsky
      • Priscilla Lee
      • Irene Lipshin
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

Julia B. Levine

The Novitiate

I know my bare shoulders darken by day.
That deer hide in heat.
 
And it is the creek pooling under a willow
that reminds me the soul loves the unsayable,
 
while the self has named these orange petals, Starfire.
I stand on shore yanking their stalks loose
 
like a rope that is breaking. Must be broken.
This is the only world I have ever loved.
 
But it is a child’s game to believe in enough.
To remember suddenly my dream last night
 
of rising up, flying out across grasslands,
a trio of mustangs racing far below.
 
Years now, I’ve studied the good book,
but found nothing except the truth
 
of my body as it stands beside this brook,
clutching a torch of flowers, as if to signal here
 
to those three wild horses stepping through
as deer. Such slender legs, thin as foals.
 
Dark lips deep in berries,
muzzles needled in between the thorns. 

S. Erin Batiste
Julia B. Levine’s awards for her work include the Northern California Book Award for Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, (LSU press, 2014), and first prizes in the 2019 Bellevue Literary Review, 2019 Public Poetry Awards, and 2018 Tiferet Poetry Prize. Her fifth collection, Ordinary Psalms, will be published in 2021 from LSU press.
Art: Molly Dunham
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.