2 A.M.
FROM THE ONLINE CHAPBOOK THE JOHN AND MIM POEMS
2 A.M.
Miriam Levine
He’s gone to sleep on top of the quilt,
gone to sleep with the windows open,
the French Suites playing in a continuous loop.
I shouldn’t be here, looking at his
ruined feet twisted like roots,
the swell of his belly where the shirt rides up,
the damp hen feathers of his white hair,
a purplish smudge blood
on the quilt from the cut on his knee.
I shouldn’t be here, turning back
and forth from John to the saraband.
The glow from the red-shaded lamp
can’t protect him from me.
He seems to blush but it’s only lamplight.
He’s gone to sleep with these notes like struck glass.
If he wakes it should be to the music of Bach
without someone like me
spying on him, voracious and appalled.
The John and Mim Poems
Miriam Levine
2026
The John and Mim Poems is a portrait of a marriage and Miriam Levine’s gift to you.