John Levy lives on the outskirts of Tucson with his wife, the painter Leslie Buchanan. His most recent book is 54 poems: selected & new (Shearsman Books, 2023) and his most recent chapbook is Guest Book for People in My Dreams (Proper Tales Press, 2024).

Collage for Grzegorz Wróblewski

So many dogs, each alone in the black-and-white
photos that I glued next to each other on this sheet of
white typing paper, and they all have their eyes

open, and in some of them they are in the rain
but they are happy anyway. The one dog on the steps of
the Mexican pyramid looks unusually

contemplative, although she is always like that, even
when she watches a praying mantis on the other side of the picture
window. If you counted the photos you would discover

there are 77 of them, but you don’t have to do
the counting. One of the dogs is Viking, the one at the
top left corner who looks like he never

learned to snarl, despite his name
or maybe
because of it?

Portrait of George Washington by Alan Chong Lau

So far (on June 13th, 2024) Alan’s portrait of George
is only an idea. Or a

lie. Alan has not painted Mr. Washington

in a boat, or sitting at his breakfast table, or
smiling with his wooden teeth, or in a red convertible

in a parade with a cheerleader who has just thrown

a baton far above her and her outstretched
arm, or in a yellow Speedo on a diving board, or holding

a dachshund, or with boxing gloves as he

shadowboxes in his boxer shorts in his tidy
bedroom, or standing on his head with his eyes

in his head, both eyes and his one head.

Or holding a black umbrella in a rainstorm,
the rain falling so hard it is tearing

the umbrella to tatters but George

smiles, and George’s hair is
perfect, he’s having a perfect hair day.

Nut

                                         for Ken Bolton



You emailed me these words yesterday, generously
approving of a poem I had emailed you that was/is
somewhat more nonsensical than my normal
abnormalities. Here are your words:

“But shouldn’t poetry be nuts once in a while, even regularly?”

I want to rhyme regularly with either midnight or kumquat, or preferably
both, but am thwarted once again
by my mother tongue. My mother, she sneaks
in to many of my thoughts and some of my poems,

never very nuttily. Bye, Mom. You, however, Ken, I imagine you
as an American, on Halloween, at age seven, in a costume
you yourself designed and sewed, to look exactly
like an almond, an almond with arms and legs, two eyeholes,

having chosen the almond primarily because you wanted the challenge of creating in fabric the reticulated shell, and the pleasure
of saying reticulated to the other kids and having them wonder
if you were speaking Latin or something else un-

patriotic. Then, when any adult asked you who you
were supposed to be, you’d say, “I’m an endocarp,”
pause, then add, “An almond’s
endocarp.” You would love how they’d pretend to understand.