Chuck Levenstein, Ph.D., MSc, is an economist and policy analyst -- and poet and writer. He is Professor Emeritus in Department of Work Environment, retiring from teaching in 2003. He is adjunct professor of occupational health at Tufts University School of Medicine and one of the leading researchers concerned with social factors in occupational and environmental health. Dr Levenstein chairs the advisory committee for United SteelWorkers Federally-funded projects and for The New England Consortium. His most recent book (with Greg deLaurier and Mary Lee Dunn), THE COTTON DUST PAPERS (2002), concerns the 50-year struggle for recognition of byssinosis (“brown lung”) in the U.S. Dr. Levenstein served on the IOM/NAS Committee on Health and Safety Needs of Older Workers. He is Editor Emeritus of New Solutions, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal of occupational and environmental health policy and is co-editor of the Baywood series on Work, Health and Environment. Prof. Levenstein is a recipient of the American Public Health Association’s award for lifetime contribution to occupational health. He has published widely in poetry e-zines and has appeared previously in Loch Raven Review. His three books of poetry are Lost Baggage , Poems of World War III, and Animal, Vegetable.
Summer 2009
Table of Contents - Vol. V, No. 2
Poetry Essays Translations Fiction
Chuck Levenstein
I seem to be grieving
For my mother, my father, my son,
For my brothers and others,
For myself prematurely,
For the life I might have led---
Such futility! Not that we do not
Deserve to be remembered,
Mourned,
But the last is certainly not finished,
And who knows
The mistakes yet to be made.
The witch taps head and chest
with long fingers and mutters thyroid, thymus,
presses down the resisting arm.
10AM or 4PM which does your body want,
I’m better at 4 she says but the group
from Cincinnati wants a demo in the morning.
Bony face, big nose, black eyes:
taps like a hungry chicken, mutters
grief, grief, and I know I’m in the right place---
This witch has got something for me.
© Chuck Levenstein
