by Tony Schanuel
Lucky
Lightning garrotes the night
with its bright ribbons,
flung out from the fingers
of a strange warmth
on an early March Saturday.
We were driving home
from a memorial for a man
I didn’t know well. But, and.
I think, we’ve been too lucky.
I definitely think
you are driving too fast.
Sometimes it seems you
are rushing through our lives
or rushing towards death,
which is not necessarily the same.
I want to remind you, how our lives
have twisted together so much,
it would be impossible
to separate us in the wreckage.
It’s late and the water runs
along the windows in rivers.
I reach across the console,
touch the small of your back or maybe
I drape my hand on your knee
and squeeze, a gesture
of affection or admonishment,
a small act of duplicity.
I remember an abandoned poem
I tried to write. About the man
who couldn’t escape the lightning.
Who got tired of waiting.
Who finally did the job himself.
I need to remind you how your body
is tethered to mine, the way
lighting finds some people
more than twice.
Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a high school teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Cobra Milk, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. The author of two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press), her first full length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, will be published in the summer of 2023 (Unsolicited Press). Instagram: @ejoylevinson Twitter: @ejoylev
Tony Schanuel is an award-winning photographer and visual artist who has fused a professional background in photography, digital technology, and painting and mark making to create fine art that transcends those mediums. His work has been featured in Digital Imaging Magazine, Computer Graphic Magazine, Wild Heart Journal, St. Louis Design Magazine, and is a featured artist in Cyber Palette and Extreme Graphics, two books showcasing digital artists and their work. He has exhibited at the Florence Biennale and his art is held in private and corporate collections including the Fine Arts Museum of Houston permanent photographic collection. http://www.schanuelphoto.com/.