Poetry by Aaron Weiss

SPIDERS BEHIND GLASS

(1)

I dress in the mirror and imagine roaming forever.

I wear too many clothes at once; I carry a one-way wardrobe.

I wonder if the shirt I’m wearing

Will allow visits to an opera and an arcade in the same hour.

A baptism in Chinatown?

Is there too much dry mustard on the front? or does it look like paint—

Making it all seem a mixture of artwork and labor.

(2)

The suit-and-tie man lets his baby girl sit on a park bench.

Useless from walking as well,

He preaches European over her head as

She picks a mark above his nose, disobedient, without eye-focus.

She’s smart, I think, as

The baby boy, trailing autonomously,

Solutes the sidewalk with his premature tongue.

(3)

I wonder when my sideburns became wings, and,

Will they take me

Over there where I, or a man and his babies—

All the typical spiders behind glass—

May look up a mountain

Into the proud smiles of freshly named Gods, validated,

“Oh yes! There’s room for thousands more!”

I’M FIFTY IN METRIC YEARS

I’ve worn out years not knowing the days.

It’s Sunday though, I note, and

I’ll sleep on my floor instead,

Cursing freely at a left-footed moccasin.

I’ll be the jacket with no zipper;

Gather everything, just to watch the wind tear it apart.

I’ll be the trillionaire's wife;

The one who needs a blindfold to sleep.

PRONATION

Walking over the esplanade,

Silent, within my own steps,

A man dragging a woman’s keen ear

Ruins my question of

What makes fresh water flow bronze?

“These shoes really support my over-pronated arches,” he says.

This should upset you too, I say to no one.

That a string-puppet would create a word, an argument, for

An inventor’s flawed feet;

And that such a man, even tired, would embrace it.