More from John

Her name? Barbara. Fourteen, we must have been.

When I got her bra off, I saw two hairs sprouting from her nipple.

No, it didn’t stop me. You know when you get going—

as for us, we didn’t stop. I’m your Nora Barnacle,

you’re a kind of Joyce. I mean you have to write.

From my loins, our son who looks like me and laughs like you.

Remember the dark line down your belly

when you were pregnant with him . . . and . . . I was sure . . .

lost to me—look up. Pigeons. That window.

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre . . . . ”

You’re quoting Yeats, Mim? Cork it. There!

That split second the flock turns, it disappears.

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The John and Mim Poems is a portrait of a marriage and Miriam Levine’s gift to you.