Hi!

I'm Dana Levin, and I'm  going to read a poem called "How to Hold the Heavy Weight  of Now" from my new book. The book is called Now Do You Know Where You Are, and it stems from an experience  I had with a really good friend.

And I was talking to her about... just... how heavy everything feels currently  with everything going on. I know you know exactly what I mean, and the poem is a rendition of exactly what happened. She said, “You just made this gesture with your body–” and opened her arms as if she could barely fit them around an enormous ball— “Make that shape again,” she said, and so I did. “Now let it change,” she said, and I did— slowly closing the space between my arms, fingertips converging until they touched— I watched my hands turn together, align pinkie-side to pinkie-side, I watched my palms open, pushing gently forward, leading my body forward, I watched them let a bird go, I watched my hands make an offering—