W.O.M.B. (Where Others Might Be)
I’ve been here before, on this very subway platform.
Don’t tell anyone, but I was a witness to the murder of the Ice Man,
in the year whatever, B.C.E. (Before Certain Errors).
The arrow was very sharp.
I was also a witness to my time in the W.O.M.B. (Where Others Might Be),
and my journey through the Birth Canal (just plain old B.C).
Every night I revisit my primal scream.
I remember, my twin said, “I can’t breathe.”
Oh, please jump down and save that man.
Then you can tell me your story.
The Palace Called Home
In the garden of St. John the Divine
a peacock walked up to me and spread his tail feathers:
I thought, for a moment, maybe there is a god.
A tall god, a god of color.
That night, reading the shadows of the tea leaves on the wall
I saw drowned sharks, dead maples
and an eclipse of the sun.
These three were the only things I saw that night.
The next night I saw the god of color,
dark and ragged, blazing in the garden.
I saw a blue season of tears,
cakes of earth too dry to eat in summer,
mud that wrestles you into ditches in the spring.
And I saw, by her own whim, the god of color,
like a shadow beneath a small boat
just before it capsizes.
Penelope Weiss was born in 1942. She grew up in New York City and now lives in Shrewsbury, Vermont. Storiana, her collection of stories, was published in 2010 by Casa de Snapdragon Press and is available on Amazon.
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