Alexander Levering Kern is a Somerville-based poet and writer whose work has appeared in Ibbetson Street, Georgetown Review, Spare Change News, MOBIUS, Caribbean Writer, Scout Somerville, anthologies from Pudding House, Meridian Anthology, and many others.   Currently he teaches and works at Northeastern University as Executive  Director of the Center for Spirituality, Dialogue and Service.  His local, national, and international work in Quaker and interfaith peace and social justice efforts have been covered by the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Harvard Gazette, and other publications. He is editor of Becoming Fire: Spiritual Writing from Rising Generations and his first collection of poems is forthcoming.  Alex lives on Spring Hill with his wife Rebecca Grunko (an ESL teacher in Somerville Public Schools) and his rapidly growing kids Elias and Ruthanna.

Alexander Levering Kern

Natural Selection

Rush hour fumes assail our nostrils
flaring as we circle Union Square.
Words, ideas, and images gallop
across the prairie of my mind
then whinny & saunter over the asphalt
into the stables of night.

Circling again, they claw for attention
demanding a place at the top of the heap. They miss their link in the great chain of being
yet settle for a spot in the very last pew.
Then comes an elegant din of sparrows
and carp from the well of my mind.
Outside Casa de Carnes, a bovine sign frowns
like a minotaur guarding the gate.

The mind’s scalpel begins dissecting each option
stymied by choice and seeking a whole:
some pool of quiet, some plenitude
beneath the sum of all words.

Butcher’s meat hangs from curled hooks,
each one an inverted question mark. At a turn in the road, my memory chokes
on the hard tack offered by an editor who wrote
with tongue in cheek and fork in hand: “You don’t have to eat the whole ox to know that the meat you’re eating is tough.”

— Alexander Levering Kern

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