Poetry by Sherri Levine
She steps out of his pickup truck
into the blue of the day,
somewhere west, south
where gulls fly in formation
hearts wrapped around their compass,
earth’s magnetic fields.
She breathes in deep,
once, then again,
sighs heavily,
tingling with the memory
of the stranger in the truck—
gentle, generous, kind,
cacophony of uhs and ohs,
crescendoed bliss.
curt farewells,
kiss on the cheek,
the door slammed shut.
She presses the button of the elevator,
opens her apartment door,
thinks of all the possibilities
of hope and the open road.
The dimly lit
paper mache star
hanging on the ceiling,
guides her home
to a nesting place,
her heart wrapped around the steering wheel.
Sherri Levine lives in Portland, Oregon where she teaches English to immigrants and refugees at Portland Community College. She left the cold, harsh winters of upstate New York twenty years ago and ever since has been happily soaking in the Oregon rain. Her poetry and other literary works have been published in The Timberline Review, Hartskill Review, Five Willows Literary Review, Sassafras Literary Magazine, and The Sun Magazine.