Poems by Florence Weinberger

The Painter Tries to Leave     Every time the painter tries to leave I find a stain, a smudge that needs repair. I scan the walls while he works and talks,  tells me he wants to change professions, his wife may want another child. Just one moment, I say, as the day edges toward the door,  here’s a spot someone brushed against. He covers it. White paint spatters his face. “Water based. I can wash it off easy.”  It begins to get dark.  I see shadows tucked in the corners. I see black holes. He brings buckets of fresh paint in from his truck, pours it into the steep crevasses I show him. “I have to go.” He leaves me a brush, a bucket of touch-up. It won’t be enough.         Understudy     Hired frequently to feign death she became expert   kept her eyes from blinking  stiffened so convincingly, her skin mimicked fresh-planed wood    with bruised blue knots. To get that marbled stare she stifled her inner life    left behind  her unwept rages, her horror of cold fingers   the scars of her affections.  It never occurred   to the actors who puttered around her to ask how she’d mastered that pallor.         Danger Zones   The red cone, the yellow tape, the tip of orange flame just above the trees, the tires’ screech behind your back, the wind’s shift, the skipped beat,  rustle in the brush, the muck on the surface, flicker in the mine shaft.   Shadow in the pool. Shadow on an X-ray, the glow in the lab, the mote in the eye.  The ember. The odor. The nail.   The uninflected smile, the unexploded bomb,  the dead clone, the third rail. Lipstick on the mirror.    The curse, the cut, the boil, the friction.   The black box. Black ice.    Rust. Camouflage.   

   Brace Yourself  
Get out of my hair. Get up on the breeze and disappear. Get out of here.   Wind’s like a Brillo pad tonight.  I hear the blinds rattle, rise to pee and come back, fake walking in my sleep stiff as Frankenstein. If you touched my skin you’d get freezer burn.   In the morning, two lemons  have been torn from the tree.  You’re still here. I boil water to calm the stung air, to slay my tongue with tea before it comes for you. You’d be better off trusting the ripsaw wind.        

The Poets’ Beating      The poet who wrote she was beaten said she made it up.  She was always surprised anyone thought otherwise.   A teacher of unimaginable tenderness, she's dead now.  She used to drop her poems when she read.    They'd float like spiders and when they'd land she'd bend  shy as a cat to gather and read them in their irresistible disorder.   In my dream, when I'm being hit, kicked, knocked down,  one of my assailants signals me to scream.    I don't remember knowing him, but this is a time of conspiracies, a dark uncivil age. My despair wakens me.    Later, my husband said I uttered a word we've forgotten, maybe a password I needed to get through that crack in the dream when I finally screamed and was saved.    Safety is the illusion of the newly saved.  When I go back to sleep, I'm smack in the belly of danger again.    If this were only my myth, the labyrinth would take me through trial and error  to a satisfying life.   It's not going to be that simple, is it, because now when I pick up the story,  there are two of me. 
We are identical in everything, except one is still shaky and bruised; one is seated opposite, unmoved.

***

Return to Current Issue

Florence Weinberger