Poem of the Week by Jan Heller Levi

Hanging out the Laundry to Dry

The sun is high in the sky,
vivid, livid, but kind. When the Master makes His appearance, He
doesn't always

shine. I say the sad music, the music like water, the music that makes
Buddha
anxious, the flip of the tuxedo tails when the Master

polishes His behind.
I want to be happy, will be too, wearing somebody's socks,
nobody's shoes.

Jan Heller Levi is the author of Once I Gazed at You in Wonder, winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. She is the editor of A Muriel Rukeyser Reader and coeditor of Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan. Her other honors include the George Bogin Memorial Award and the Emily Dickinson/Writer Magazine Award, both from the Poetry Society of America. She currently teaches at the Hunter College Graduate Program in Creative Writing.

The above poem and information comes from Levi's 2005 collection, Skyspeak.