Penelope Weiss


What the Cheshire Cat Said to Me

Do you remember the time I threw the duchess
and jumped into the disappearing tree before she tried to kill me?

Since then, I hear the shriek of thunder every night, 
the crunch of headstones all around me.

At midnight, I melt into the rage of insects falling from the sky.
I dream I’m salted on the mountains that green themselves

with parrots who fly daily between brilliance and dementia.
Perhaps I’m dead and will never return. I don’t know.

Oh, please come visit me in the disappearing tree.



What the Cheshire Cat Didn’t Say

Always I think of my time in the lilyverse
my journey into the obverse 
and even the shotput of the primal scream. 

I line the stream of my memory with fish skins
and swim in the froth of lilymania.

I want to taste those divine bubbles 
but my tastebuds are too small.
My mind is also too frail, too fragile, too je ne sais quoi.

These words spout from my head in the feral night.
I search for my very own lilyput out there in the obverse.

Please sing me a lullaby and put me to sleep forever.
I will love you forever, je ne sais quoi.



Who’s the Monster Here?

A king of Afghanistan (the one who invented the burqa) 
stars in a film in my mind. 

Dressed in an ill-fitting burqa, he floats in a salty sea. 
The endless loop of my mind turns 

always turns to see what he cannot see/hear what he cannot hear 
sing what he cannot sing/love what he cannot love. 

I burn him in effigy/I burn him for real.
I dissolve his bones in acid/I seal him in a sarcophagus.
I hear him cry “Let me go, let me go, let me go…”

Over and over, the loop plays in my mind.
Will this movie never end?

Penelope Weiss grew up in New York City and now lives in Shrewsbury, Vermont. Storiana, her collection of stories, was published by Casa de Snapdragon Publishing and is available on Amazon.

 
 

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