Thank you, Elizabeth, for this beautiful, atmospheric poem!
The WriteAngles Journal Submissions are coming in!!
Our Unlucky Bones
By Elizabeth Levine
I reach down the bones
to the spleen of my intentions.
It is the way women in this family
rise from the ashes, get out of bed,
build a new house from cinders and sorrow.
It is as if I had been lying down,
flattened from an entire decade of death.
It is our family legacy
to outlive husbands, sons, brothers.
Now the death of a daughter….
How this bitter earth is fertilized
with our unlucky bones,
our interrupted narratives.
walking down the hallway of grief,
I stare at my relatives absent from photographs-
those we once knew as well as the back of our palms?
How can we recall where we came from,
if my ancestors’ faces no longer surround us?
Where has all our history gone?
Elizabeth Levine, M.A., M.P.H., M.F.A., has two published poetry chapbooks from Finishing Line Press. In 2025, she won the Brooklyn Film Arts Nonfiction Prize. As an Amherst Writers & Authors Facilitator, she offers online workshops on “Writing about Disability, Illness and Grief.” To register, please visit her website strategyofmemory.com.