Selected poems by Hannah Weisz

The Three Endings

I: The Long Marriage

“getting deja vu from daydreams of our future,

i want to touch you like we have time!

hold your hand over the table, over our heads

miss you for an endless meaning

love you like we were never a secret.”

You were always the one who lifted,

So it took until now for me to realize that

You are pretty heavy.

Not that it ever mattered, but

Dragging this bag

Over boulders is a chore

Especially when your blood leaves a leaky trail

Of rigor-mortis-muscle memory.

Sweating and panting, and reaching the cliff,

I wish

That this

View was something we could share.

And sweating and panting, and reaching

Something else entirely,

I wish

That that

Pleasure could last both our lives.

I don’t unzip the duffel bag. It’s not really you in there anyway.

We tried to make it work for years,

But lover,

Our definitions of working

(In both the verb and adjective senses)

Were paradoxical. I solved the puzzle.

I untangled the space-time continual knot

Caused by the logical fallacy of long marriage. And yes,

We had thumbs brushing over hands and all-night candlelit dinners,

And each other’s hair-smell to put us to sleep, but where did that get us?

Here, as the spray of the ocean salts my eyes. Your body makes a splash

That reaches up back up the cliff to touch me.

I envy the fish for their nearness to you, their ability to see you clearly through the waves.

I will sleep again, without you, some night, somehow.

I will try to make our love work in my dreams.

II: The Unrequited

“i’m trying to make a poem

out of my love for you

but i’m not smart enough to transmute

this warmth into art.

if you feel the same, write for me.”

You hurt me first

With the lilt of your voice practically stoning me to death.

The weight of the sound, the stability in it, anchored me

Down. My name in your mouth was

Unrelated to you. It was just God

Sending a message through you.

Now, as I lay you down gently in my trunk,

It is the most I have gotten to touch you at once

Since we played lovers in the theater.

I won’t commit the libel of calling you

Anything to me but a marvelous actor.

It is not ugly or violent or gore-ish,

It is just you

With your limbs bending in the opposite directions.

You manage to achieve grace

In motion even now. You don’t have to perform

Anymore, you don’t have to be beautiful.

You didn’t leave a dent on the car, but I can’t say in good conscience

That the reverse is true.

My mirror remains clear

Up against your mouth,

Fogless. It is pristine.

III: The Short-Lived

“when i kissed you, you pulled away first,

afraid that my mouth would taste like

a memory, my hands holding

your head like a request for

something you couldn’t give me.

when i ended it, you didn’t seem to mind.”

I held the broken glass bottle over my head

Behind the door, awaiting your entrance.

But you knock. You’d never warned your entrance

Into a room

Before this moment and I’m not sure

What to do with it.

Something happened that is unrelated to me and I don’t know

What to say besides:

“Come in.” I want you in the room,

That’s the breadth of what I understand.

I drop the bottle, forgetting it was ever in my hands.

We both scream, startling at the sound of shattering glass.

I tend to the nicks on your bare calves

And sweep the floor while you

Sit on the sofa, watching me.

I don’t wish I could protect you from the world.

I just wish I cared more.

I just wish I remembered

The color of your eyes

When I wasn’t looking at them.

When we say goodbye,

We don’t ask questions.

The answers won’t change

The fact that I won’t see

You again.

Spooky Season

i went to a new haunted house and Its windows

were hollow pits and under its front door

dripped pineapple and mango juice. Sweet and sticking to

itself, sweet and sticking to me if i touched

the wrong or perhaps right spot. Sweet and destined

to sour, an acid i always or perhaps never needed

to learn to love. Its siding was gray under the harsh truth-spell

of winter sky, but shone gold in the right angle

of sun (a merciful Midas, willing to say never

mind when the curse no longer served). my exterior turns pink and scaly.

i went to a new haunted house and Its chimney

smoke did not smell like deja vu but i knew

that would change. Wait.

Or perhaps don’t. Its smoke

will enter you no matter how much

you decide to care...

11/6/24 with unapologetically passive voices and prepositional endings

i knew not

from any numbers or news

but from the wailing

cries of the boy next door.

his name translates to heart

from the language of the people

we descend from, the people we have given

and will give more

bomb-intended billions to

sweeping, sweeping, sweeping,

pencil shavings have laid

on my floor for weeks now, dishes piled

in the sink, spine sagging with stillness just products

of a personal sickness that will fester regardless

of justice or

lack thereof.

if it exists.

the personal, i mean.

come to think of it, justice too.

sweeping, sweeping, sweeping,

but somehow when i find a comically

large grapefruit that morning once

i am finished being told that we know

no answers, it is shoved in a tight

cargo pocket and caramelized (christening

this bubble’s oven) and cut into

quarters for my neighbors.

i am asked to define “Community

Care” and watch a(n overdue) lecture

on “How to Do Nothing.” i think

we might be doing more

than we give ourselves credit for.

and yet: sweeping, sweeping, sweeping,