Elizabeth Joy Levinson

Subnivean

Beneath feet of snow,
where it is less cold,
where small plants hold,
like studs, like girders,
walls built in sublimation,
tiny ice castles, crystalline rooms for
moles or mice,
they shelter in snow, until
sudden thaw and flood
an owl's talons,
the fox's keen leap and snout,
weaving ermine,
they haunt those halls,
and why shouldn't they,
which would you choose? 

Hold this small velvet against your cheek
which softness does the world need,
which softness do we not?

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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 fall of 2023 (Unsolicited Press).