about the author

Ezra Lebovitz is a writer and student who is passionate about literature, history, music, and human rights. He attended the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio this past summer, has received awards from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and the New Jersey Council of English Teachers, and works as an editorial intern for the Blueshift Journal. In his spare time, he enjoys making bad puns and trying too hard.


Bookmark and Share
 

 


font size

Devolution 

Ezra Lebovitz



Alternative content


When it happens,
this is how it happens:
          moss spilling out of his mouth when he breathes. Shadow backing into
               skin.
Trading tongue for seawater.

          It’s not his fault—he saw the way ultraviolet and earth danced
around each other like mid-morning lovers. The shadow between them. All he wanted was to introduce soil to sunlight and sing about the opposite of intervention. All he found was a way

to stop drowning. To become the sea instead.

The boy opens his mouth to apologize
          but finds clover sprouting from his lips. He wants to be a greater good
so he lets it grow.

Here is how it happens: boy gets tired of bleeding
          and becomes the ground instead.

He can’t help it. He gives boyhood over to earth
          and makes of himself an elegy.

          This is how the body decides
                    it is not a thing worth keeping
          and pins blades of grass
                                in the place of veins,
                    replaces reflections with tinfoil.

Here is how boy buries himself
          before he is born.

Watch for the ground:
find him beneath it, turning the body to springtime.





HTML Comment Box is loading comments...