That’s the Way to Travel
Jan Heller Levi & Marlies Pekarek

Thinking of rasPutin, I laughed when a friend joked about the availability of refurbished geiger counters on Amazon. Gallows humor helps to ease the anxiety of current conditions. Here’s a serious kind of distraction: Moloko Print’s bilingual volume of selected poems, “That’s the Way to Travel” in English and German, by Jan Heller Levi, with illustrations by Marlies Pekarek. (Levi’s first book, “Once I Gazed at You in Wonder,” which earned the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, is also available on Amazon. No joke.)

EVE SPEAKS

Once I was in Eden and walked, blithely, out.
How was I to know?
There seemed another Eden,
just next door. It looked familiar,
and I was tired of the new.
All day I strolled around with his name-tags.
Glitter turned specific, but I craved
the blobbiness of things,
the inexact borders,
the possibility that this could also be
that. Of course I was an idiot. I'd run back
now, if I could, hear his painless
children, even call the girl If Only,
the boy, I Told You So.
Instead of living in this okay crowded world,
I'd make all my mistakes in Paradise.
Is that possible?
Is it?
I didn't even see the gate. 
Then the gate closed.
(page 10)

BECAUSE WE LIKE THE MAPS

we take the trips. The car is ready,
packed. The adventurer waits patiently.
We hug each other, count to 3.

I lift. It's got to be one uninterrupted
lift from the wheelchair to his feet.
But there's an instant,

midway, when the adventurer
hangs in my arms between rising
and falling — his chest tilts forward,

his butt juts back, his jeans
ride down, his shirt rides up,
his belly dangles in the gap —

it isn't dignified. And then we find
the click. It's like we're both holding on
and both letting go — hallelujah — he's

up. On his own two feet. Don't
marry him, some good friends said, 
your life will be so circumscribed.

At the top of the lift, we've added a kiss.
We'd take the kiss without the lift, but that's
not possible. Maybe our kiss is a gentle

fuck you to anyone who's watching
who thinks our life is less than theirs.
Because we like the maps, we take the trips.
(page 86)

ANATOMY LESSON

If you could have things just the way you wanted,
every part of you would be detachable.
Your heart, which doctors call a muscle
& they might be right, plops out of your chest,
rolls its way across the floor with a funny plud plud
to the typewriter, heaves itself up on the keys.
It flops & writhes & the words come up
like punches on the page. Meanwhile,
you have to pee. Your bladder
grows tiny legs, scampers to the bathroom,
hovers over the toilet seat. Your hands
sprout little wings, go flying after it, clutch it, lift
squeeze. Out comes the piss, like water
from a soapy sponge. Oh that's 
delightful. Meantime, remember, your heart 
is still writing, Now you'd like a suntan. Your
bare arms & legs take the elevator down
to the park, lay themselves out across
a bench, rotate every fifteen minutes
between the prime tanning hours of 11 & 2.
Your right breast takes the subway
downtown to you husband's studio, your left
breast hops the shuttle to Boston to be
cupped in the hand of a former lover. Your
clit is checking into a hotel room in Cannes
with the tongue of the very young Paul Newman.
Meantime, remember, your heart is still writing.
Your hands are now free to join a phone tree
& stuff envelopes for Greenpeace. Your feet
are dancing to the Marvin Gaye version of
Heard It Through the Grapevine, your chest is
slipping on a tee-shirt that says No Justice, 
No Peace & heading for the street. Meantime, 
your heart, your fabulous, brilliant, uncomplicated,
undistracted heart is writing, writing, writing.
(page 122)

THAT'S THE WAY TO TRAVEL

He was in deep shit is the first line.
The adventurer is writing his 7th novel.
There's a protagonist who uses a wheelchair,

and a murder, and flights of stairs that the protagonist
can't get up or down. Or does he get up and down?
Does he have mysterious powers

that will eventually be revealed?
Few murders have been solved
by a person in a wheelchair.

There was a detective on an old TV series,
but you never saw Ironside stopped outside a door
because his wheelchair was too wide.

It would be good for the reading public
to get to know a character who frequently
can't get into a room, or a store,

or his or her doctor's office. The adventurer's novel
could help change laws, or, at least, attitudes, especially
in the adventurer's native land, where they treat cows

better than cripples. Rimbaud called the bourgeoisie
"the seated." The adventurer is always seated. And like
the bourgeoisie he acquires lots of possessions. His include:

motorized wheelchair, 30-pound battery, battery re-charger,
adapter plug, surge protector, inflatable cushion,
air pump, spare footrests, spare tires, portable

commode chair, and transfer board. There's also a small,
flexible, plastic-mouthed balloon-like device called a uri-bag.
Lately, the adventurer has been scooting around town,

thinking up ideas for his novel. He gets whomped by sidewalk
potholes, stranded on corners where there isn't a curb-cut,
leapt over and leapt around by pedestrians

who think he's a car. He keeps smiling, so he doesn't 
look like one of those bitter cripples. Invariably,
someone passing will nod at him — well, not really at him —

but at his wheelchair, grin and say That's the way to travel.
Last night the adventurer and I were talking some non-
bourgeois talk about nomads and gypsies. When

the Europeans tried to destroy Romani culture, they burned
the wheels of the gypsies' wagons. They moved them into concrete
housing projects — running water, electricity. But the gypsies

couldn't stand it. They chopped holes in the roofs so they could
still sleep under the sky. They can cut off our wheels, they said,
but they can't make us choose ceilings over stars.
(pages 94 and 96)