Michele Leavitt, a poet and essayist, is also a high school dropout, hepatitis C survivor, adoptee, and former trial attorney. Her essays appear in venues including The Rumpus, Guernica, Catapult, and The Sycamore Review. Recent poems can be found in Poet Lore, North American Review, Stirring, and Baltimore Review.

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Draft for the End of an Age

Bored with pornography
and other self-evidences,
like In sea-ice occurrences, duality is distinguishable
only by presence or absence of perennial ice,
we crave
complexity, the fractal coastline intricacies
that play a vital function
in regime shifts.
We already knew
sediment composition of raised gravel beaches shows a high degree of uniformity.
Although the dominant
clast shape is oblate,
rock outcroppings

still project seaward, and this suggests
some kind of threshold crossing
beyond a groom carrying a bride
over a doorstep.
Stop writing about us. Listen – do
you hear the grating…