I’d like to talk to you the way the girl in the movie talks to her boyfriend. Slow and young, she speaks of death and love as if she has reached the pith of what she can give him. If they don’t skitter apart too soon, it will get played out, because I was that young and this old, I don’t know how to pry you open, not even with one of those electric can-openers, quick, smooth-edged, to leave you gaping so your insides become immediate and I’m able to tell by the smell if you’ll last. I’d like to shop with you, see how you decide and spend, because I’ve slept next to you, learning your silence. How can you be so still, that reluctant to reveal your dream, even when you bring me tulips and wine? And what is the use of experience when we shed our cells each second? I feel my way as if you’re some exotic creature I’ve not met before, not just a quotidian you with the formulaic attributes of contradiction and hesitation. So I’ve learned nothing? — we can get this old and know nothing? We can keep coming together, eat across the table, even in the cautious light of morning, and know nothing?
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 1.
Florence Weinberger was born in New York City, raised in the Bronx, educated at Hunter College, California State University, Northridge and UCLA is the author of four published collections of poetry, The Invisible Telling Its Shape (Fithian Press,1997) and Breathing Like a Jew (Chicory Blue Press, 1997), and Carnal Fragrance, (Red Hen Press, 2004), and Sacred Graffiti, (Tebot Bach, 2010.)See all items about Florence Weinberger