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You are here: Home / Poetry / How Levity Hungers
How Levity Hungers

Poetry

How Levity Hungers

When we met, you told me I had a voice  
that could pinch the corners of our Carolina town 
wrap its skin into a hand-held bundle  
and inflate it -- balloon, string-tied  
braiding infinities around pointer and thumb.  
You said the only other sound  
that could do this came from finches 
when dawn was nothing more than white noise
though they moved like the needlework in nests. 
You were gripping Helium when the ground  
had been peeled and repurposed  
acrobatic pictures through a marble vista.  

Is that when you fell? Chaff like Prometheus  
shivering in the wheat fields, paint-ribbons  
and blistered brick all pumped with a siren song? 
You plummeting into the carcass of earth?  
The porch swing. Us dangling our sneakers   

like the word enough. 

I am scared to strum your palm in danger 
of plucking strings.  

Scared to whisper in that way for fear 
of it coming out as music.  

Danae Younge is a 19-year-old writer whose work has appeared in over 30 publications in the US, UK, Canada, Pakistan, & internationally, including Salamander Magazine, The Curator, Palette Point, Nonconformist Magazine, & No Contact. She proudly identifies as biracial & bisexual. She was a national winner selected by The Live Poets Society of New Jersey in 2020 & placed in the international It’s All Write competition for high schoolers. Danae is currently pursuing a BA in Creative Writing at Occidental College. You can read more of her work at www.danaeyounge.com & follow her on Instagram: @danae_celeste_

Featured Artwork:

Miami Vice

Jay Armstrong is a writer, musician, visual artist and editor of ANON Magazine living in Austin, Texas. “All graphics are analog-based, circuit-bent, for the initial purpose of projecting live.”

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