What I Learned from the Savage She-Hulk
after Aimee Nezhukumatathil
With thighs that never end
Some women pick up a baseball bat
before unlocking the front door
and some women are green – everywhere
there’s an interesting pathos occurring
Like hey, for shits, let’s rebuild in one body
what they invented from forty hands
and ride that feeling – it’s an honor
just to be here, just to slot into being,
nipples hard enough to cut
the space age meant to be a rebirth
a new cousin of how we used to live
breathing out my air supply, making you
like me, body already cold. I learn
replication decays into something different
to live in this world
according to its own internal logic
always spitting mad but completely unchanged
Repairing the World
I don’t know how guns work
So let’s pretend together
that anything can be undone
then of course the bodies
return to their families,
they take themselves
and even this ambling
arduous journey
can be replaced
with a cool glide
on gentle wheels over
the heat eating za’atar
who might be picked
again by living people
as fellow citizens
in an already saved world
luxuriating in their living
so they can soak the day in
Let us hold it and now let us
return to our unforgivable world
and our dead and dying
never let go of what
could have been
awaken to preserve what still is
Josie Levin (she/him) is a visual artist and writer whose work has appeared in several publications, including storysouth, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine, Denver Quarterly and was shortlisted for the 2023 Penrose Poetry Prize. Josie is a Poet-In-Residence at The Chicago Poetry Center.
