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Rachel Levitsky



Old Wave


Fold me after me
Who never went there

Beautiful as Lil Wayne
And brave foot apart

When handholding allowed
Things ample and given

Read future deep lover
A long time no change

Mother father bind her
Face in kitchen burning

Long beach road broken
Before hill, llama, pony

The cat’s broken tail
Why tell me this?

Our story to come
Beach road star car

That lavish kindness singular
Free valet parking snacks

Each consensual trauma more
Highway postage for firehose

Face light wide close
Erases archive, after feeling

Pots succulent cactus euphorbia
Coffee orange water wine

Marine layer stripes fiber
Keep plan no’s matter

Same stocks, two coast
Body function: not squeamish

Likes comfort like negative
What did you say?

Vessels releasing song simultaneous
Instructed negative don’t come

Not yet. Sex advice
From Chasidic father

Pulsation dissects
Palpitation Herophilus

Sphygmos, palmos, tromos, spasmos
Quietly reframing alone, alone

Names houses, which burns
Candle held color removed

Eastern interruption sea glass
Responds with, got this.

Engages richness. Says no.
Weeps bounty upon its

Brand perdition, Missoni, Herman
Miller someone’s reach, Saab

Pissed saying no fucking
Way will you say

Anything about it, steel
Yourself, what we have

Is a private loop
Rich to write about

Too rich to write
Poetry, mother writes novels

Sunday paints, holiday cards
A poor correspondent worried

About the handwriting it
Doesn’t hold up past

Address unknown, no response
Writes the publisher, government

Cortázar private poet’s stone
Cold resistance, a person

Never just to avoid
That blow. Steel it.

Brother  leaves building
Early San Diego’s sea birds’

Garbage, erase the messages
Garbage, kelps the scrub

Brush, scattering the message
Keep all the messages!

A many-lined book
One sweet aunt’s pain

Gaunt look dear daughter
Wrapped dark near river

Random dots, freeways, Mexico
No, London … higher word

Despite good being good
To spite calling memory

Memory missing its oubli
Recapturing blue oublay sky.

Steals bright blue music
Study, walk the dog.

Make lots of people
Open to you, happy.



Poet Rachel Levistsky is a founder of Belladonna, a feminist collective dedicated to experimental women’s writing. She is the author of several collections, novels, and plays. The Story of My Accident is Ours, a novel about activism, collectivity, and agency, is available from Futurepoem. Neighbor was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2009 and reissued in 2020.  Levitsky is based in New York City.

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Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market neighborhood in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.