Florence Weinberger 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.)

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*****

Zachary’s Rainbow

Who named it teal,
             Cayuga duck dazzle-dressed to fit the marsh it’s sitting in?
My ocean’s sometimes denim,
                   often mauve, the shade inside a wave’s turn.

Who said rouge,
             blush on a cheek, labial pink of the Angelique tulip?
Why is a rainbow called hope?

My grandson’s color blind.
             His world is gray, lights and darks only, no cerise or butterscotch,
all his ice cream ashen, his gold retriever silver.

I want to ask him
        do you harbor wild parrots in your sleep?
And the auroras I see dancing in your eyes—aren’t they the dawning
                                     of imagination?

***

Baby Blue Buddha

Baby blue Buddha
what would Neruda
say about you?

You sit in a doorway
miles from Norway
or Katmandu.

There are legions of regions
whose signs are egregious:
deceiving with similar hues.

If you are a logo
for some deadbeat’s ego,
that would hardly amuse.

If you’re just hired labor
to harbor my neighbor,
what of the turmoil in Bruges?

But if you’re distracting
when I should be redacting
the occasional gifts from my muse

I wish you would give me more clues.

***

DNR

And, she says, you can always change your mind later.

Stiletto pen above a gut-colored form,
my doctor glows in standard whites.

Yes or no. What does she know?
She’s just held a cold disc to my throat
where the carotid tends to clog.

What if the river of blood, the flood of no return
is taking a pause, has become a slow leak
like the push it takes to pee at my age
and then resumes its creaky way
but it goes, it goes.

How can she be certain I’m too far gone
to harrow my muse or atone?

But under the rules her demeanor
is controlled
and her time is brief.

(Featured photo by Alexis Rhone Fancher.)