How It Begins

By Julia B. Levine

---

At first a rumble, then thunder cracks apart the morning
and suddenly I remember half-waking last night 

to a heron shrieking
as a coyote made a meal of stilts and feathers—

though in my stupor, I misheard it as drunken boys 
yelling Hooray! slowly over and over again, 

as if death was jubilant
with a broken singing in her mouth.

Now lightning welds four forks of vanishing 
into a sky that has, overnight, lost a bit of winged blue. 

When we are lucky, we forget peril’s appetite. 
But the August my daughter labored to bring her first child 

here, a force and counterforce wrestled in the mystery 
of her body and its absence still occupying mine.

Today the marsh steams, brightening green.  
And there, further out along the brambled roadside, 

I remember last summer, how blackberries 
scattered behind a trio of women 

as they carried their overfilled buckets home. 
And I remember writing then, This baby will destroy the whole of her.  

I should know. Speak to me of love and I’ll answer ruin 
begins as a brimming sweetness, threatening to spill.

Julia B. Levine’s recent awards include the Northern California Book Award in Poetry for her collection, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight (LSU, 2014), a 2022 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the American Academy of Poetry, and first prize from the Bellevue Literary Review, the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, and Tiferet. Currently her work is appearing in Terrain, The Night Heron Barks, Blackbird, and The Southern Review. Her most recent collection is Ordinary Psalms (LSU Press, 2021).

---

• Are you a SWWIMmer with literary news to share (publication/feature/award/book/book review)? We’d love to shout out your accomplishments in our Weekly Spotlight! Please email swwimmiami@gmail.com. (No DMs on any social media platforms, please.)

• Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, and Bluesky for more updates—and visit our website to see past, present, and future readings & events.

---

**We do our best to preserve the integrity of each poem; however, due to programming limitations, some poems may read differently on a mobile phone and in certain browsers. For best viewing, use Chrome on a desktop/laptop.