Arlene Weiner: For My Husband Who is Depressed at the State of the World
Lilacs perfume the city air. Smoke from wildfires
turns sunsets glorious. Talons tear the breast of the dove.
The world changes. The world doesn’t change.
Arlene Weiner: Attachments
The lesson I draw over and over
is, everything can change
in a moment.
All that you have is lent.
Arlene Weiner: Ghazal
When parting or meeting we wish each other peace.
We show with every greeting that we are lovers of peace.
Arlene Weiner: Only One Dead
Our son
in Tucson warned us we’d read
about a professor killed in his office,
shot by a former student.
Arlene Weiner: December Vigil
I think of Jeff and Mike, who won’t need
next year’s calendars, Mike saying
These are my last poems. Tomorrow
is not promised, some people say.
Arlene Weiner: The Real Thing
Maz is a theater person: actor,
writer, director. Triple threat. Gay.
His partner Donny’s a drag queen,
Dawna Day.
Arlene Weiner: Another Art
Put it on eBay, ka-ching, ka-ching—
keep nothing but the things that give you cheer.
But so many objects seem to want to cling
Arlene Weiner: My Desk Chair
Female, useful, you keep your dignity though your lap’s full of odd socks, haphazard mending. You were old sixty years ago, dressed in Goodwill’s sad maroon stain, scarred with nailholes … Continue reading
Arlene Weiner: While I live
While I live, let me pour as through a sieve
the mixed and muddied waters of my loves,
hold the gold and let the silt go.
Arlene Weiner: Pinky
Last week I took a shovel from a prepared heap,
scooped earth easily, turned, threw it
onto your coffin, plain pine.
Arlene Weiner: Dead Russian Soldier
My father lived in the land
where your son lies unburied,
now wasted by fire once again,
my kin were slaughtered there,
interred unhonored.
Arlene Weiner: More
Before he could speak my grandson learned
two signs, Finished, More,
like the first wordless words
at the breast, turning the head
or latching on.
Arlene Weiner: You’re Not Doing Enough!
A response to The Ministry for the Future, a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. Orbit. 563 pp. I hope this is an important book. It’s speculative fiction, the term an expansion of … Continue reading
Arlene Weiner: After the Emergence of the Periodical Cicadas
bouquets of cicada brides whose courtship
made the sky sing so in May.
The wedding music stopped, these are left,
to be caught by maidens in seventeen years.
