the Earth’s smallest man,
for I, her Jewish maid,
use Ajax, not Mrs. Meyer’s.
She prefers free trade rags,
Mexican housekeepers in pink
aprons who diligently assent to
cleaning toilets.
*
I am demoted to “baby-sitter,”
have sex in their basement,
peak through bottom windows,
where ground meets weeds,
my boyfriend letting me suck
his big lollipop in the midst of
Larry’s Ethan Allen furniture.
The Kings know not the
sanctimonious acts
committed against them
and their expensive refrigerator
where ham and Worcester sauce meet
lipstick and herring.
Mrs. King puts me on probation,
Her boys yell: you need Zoloft!
I whine in their reality show,
protest to Larry’s lapin ears;
he is busy with Michael Jackson’s
ghost and celebrities from the screen.
[+]
Eleanor Levine’s work has appeared in Fiction, The Denver Quarterly, Midway Journal, The Toronto Quarterly, The California State Quarterly, Prime Mincer, Happy, Penumbra, The Coachella Review, OVS Magazine, fortyouncebachelors.com, Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry (nominated for a 2012 Lambda Literary Award), Downtown Poets (anthology), New York Sex (anthology), The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Blade and other publications. She has work forthcoming in Prime Mincer, Gertrude and The Evergreen Review. In 2007 she received an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. Eleanor is currently a copy editor and lives in Philadelphia.
