Vox Populi
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Julia B. Levine: Driving South on I-5 in Spring
Fields shocked green. Clouds float like fatty cuts of dream.
And singing along with the oldies station,
we can pretend it doesn’t matter that you can’t walk anymore.
You and I can still drive up the valley’s spine,
past pistachio and cherry orchards, miles of farmland
salted with poison, Oh! slipping out between my lips
at three magpies flung hard as tuxedoed darts
flying beside our car. Later,
while the cattle chew sideways in their finishing corral,
and you pump gas, I’ll wait at the feedlot convenience store,
thinking about that feathered trinity disappeared behind us,
how every vanishing enters me
like a bomb not yet tripped, but ready to go.
Most of all, I want to believe I can keep you alive.
To say, This is more than enough and mean it
as I hoped the man behind me in line did,
when I glanced back and he mumbled, Nice day,
his cap with its red plastic horns, knife chained to his belt,
two sleeves of tattoos, swastika on one arm, cross on the other.
He was waiting to buy a king-sized bag of Sour Patch Kids.
All of us hauling up I-5 in that brief tumble of bloom,
my hand on your thigh, yours brushing my neck. Even now
I imagine that man in his black truck,
throwing back handfuls of the candy I crave too
for its doubleness, that sour-sweet we could call America—
this country, like me, brilliant at saving nothing, wanting it all.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Julia B. Levine
Julia B. Levine‘s many books include Ordinary Psalms (LSU Press, 2021); and Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight (LSU press, 2014), winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry;
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Such beautiful, striking imagery in this poem of truth and longing. I love Julia Levine’s poetry ❤️
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I do too…
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How long have I been a fan of Julia B. Levine’s poetry? That would be: ever since the very, very first poem of hers I read. And that was LONG, long ago — now I am looking at my bookshelf, and I believe the first of her collections to land in my hands (“Practicing for Heaven”) was from more than 25 years ago. She breaks my heart and lifts it, breaks it and lifts it with every poem she writes. Thank you for this one, Julia and Vox Populi!
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I share your love for Julia’s poems, Annie. It is elegant and authentic.
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This is a poem I would like to return to. ❤️
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The poem has a rich texture and strange turns, doesn’t it?
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Julia Levine’s poems are consistently stunning–knockout poetry, always relevant, always alive in the best of poetic & human senses. The sweet & sour of who we are/pretend to be/hope to be.
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Thanks, Jerry.
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I’m running short of superlatives for the parade of poems leading us down the Vox Populi pages. This one is a stunner: a road trip where the poet notices the rich passages along the strangely trodden way.
What it also invokes for me is memories of working the night shift in a 24 hour grocery store (oh, so long ago). I wonder for feedlot convenience store attendants, what the endless stream of America might mean for their psyches? Stories to be pulled out of a single glance? Low key anxiety, too?
This comment has wandered off a bit, but America itself is wandering off these days. We may find our meanings in evocative flights from point A to point B. And what we notice from each sour patch encountered along the way.
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America itself is wandering off these days. Yes, this poem is an anthem for our time.
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Very good point! In a Democracy we all, whether we wish to or not, must assume some responsibility and blame. It seems to me, more and more of us are beginning to realize this and search for ways of making a difference. I hope so.
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I hope so as well, Leo. Too many Americans treat democracy as a spectator sport.
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“Miles of farmland salted with poison.”—most likely the cause of my late husband’s Parkinson’s. The “cold” everyone had in the fall when they defoliated the cotton. We lived in Corcoran before they build the prison. Drove that route many times. Breathed the dust and poison. I am back on that highway. Thank you. A powerful poem.
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Such energy, push and intelligence in this poem! And I have never hear the completely surprising & brilliant simile of America being like a giant bag of “sour-sweet” Sour Patch Kids!
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Hahahah. Julia makes the metaphysical conceit work doesn’t she?
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There is so much movement in this poem, from the birds, the car, the land itself, then the surprise of the speaker and the man at the convenience store. A powerful poem.
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Yes, the subject is so simple: driving down the highway with her loved one. Yet, the poet draws so much from this subject…
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Always such a wowser of a poet! Julia sets her poem afire and we have to put on welder’s masks and gloves to watch and handle what happens, lest we be burnt and blinded by its brilliance. Such a world she writes! I love the last turn of complicity. Some great poet, wonderful as this one once said you can’t assign blame in a poem unless you’re willing to take some yourself.
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Wow, Sean. I’m fascinated by your last sentence:
you can’t assign blame in a poem unless you’re willing to take some yourself.
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My friend, the poet and story writer, Joshua Lavender, told me this several weeks ago during a visit. The exact quote came from Stanley Plumly during his Master’s study with him at Maryland.
”There’s no power in blame in a poem unless you also blame yourself.”
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Thank you
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