Inc. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA program for writers, Jeffrey Levine has poems published or pending in many magazines, including Quarterly West, Missouri Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Cimarron Review, Barrow Street , and others. After separating from Penelope, Ulysses takes a smallish cottage out of town, bounded by deep woods on one side, a golf course on the other where children sled or startle frogs, depending on the season.
Crows strut their turf under plum trees, furl their capes and bob like drunks.
Of the night birds, owls map the taller pines with iridescent eyes, and moon hens peck at drops of evening dew. When the divorce is hammered shut, he'll move, settle on a narrow road beside a spit of sand, beyond that, sea. He could earn a modest pension crafting bird feeders from mill scraps, keep a brace of hunting dogs for company, and rake the silt for clams and oysters at low tide. Or cocksure he does, you see it in the ebony beak, crimson breast. He flutters but makes no sound, something holding on inside him, something faintly chipped.