Megan Levad grew up across the field from her grandparents' century farm. She studied at The University of Iowa and the University of Michigan, where she received the Zell Fellowship and the Roethke Prize. Her work is forthcoming in Spinning Jenny. She wrote the lyrics for composer Tucker Fuller's song cycle Infidel, and is currently collaborating with him on an opera.

Living alone

Deerhoof cleaved from the joint, still-
blind kitten: the things I brought
to show and tell. My science project

was an incubator, all antique wood
and glass, filled with brown hen-warm
eggs, one cracked each day

to see what was inside. I took pictures.
I let two live, for the other kids
to touch, and when they'd made it through the day

I drowned them in the stream
at the edge of the playground.
Last week I found

an envelope at the flea market
holding a photograph, of baby in striped bonnet,
and a plastic vial with three baby teeth.

No date but an address, West Division.
The baby's things are sorted now, sold
to strangers like me, who will make them

curiosities, impress friends and new lovers
the way a man once impressed me with a frame
cut from a film-reel: young, pretty

Martin Sheen steps out of the Mercury.
I was a grown woman, living alone
in a house with a clawfoot tub and a porch

hidden by white hydrangeas
so overgrown they rapped at the window.
I came home one day to find them

cut off at the root, and saw
how easy it was
to see right through the house, all the way to the back door.