Mark Weiss

A FALLING LEAF

A place as baseline: here lived,
who had
the golden hair, and here
the tailor shop that's now
a coffee-bar within which
sits the girl with golden hair.

Where I was born
where I was bred
where I was shorn
where I was wed. 

Involuntary passions
one tolerates or not. 

The courtship of dogs.

He imagines an uncluttered space.
One dreams, has dreamed,
of an end to the debate
between mind and body.

Lost in a welter of juices.

Hormones
her moans
his moans.

You were the boat she sailed in
she was the cabinet
filled with potions.

Surely the wind brings rain, and in the distance
a woman struggles with an umbrella.

A gentle
thorough rain rides
before the wind.

A gentle, thorough
whisper of rain
before the breeze.

 


Mark Weiss has published seven collections of poetry, most recently As Landscape (Chax Press, 2010) and Dark Season (Least Weasel, 2011). Different Birds appeared as an ebook in 2004 (www.shearsman.com). He edited, with Harry Polkinhorn, Across the Line/ Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California (Junction, 2002) Among his translations are Stet: Selected Poems of José Kozer (Junction, 2006), Notas del país de Z, by Gaspar Orozco (Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, 2009), and the ebook La isla en peso / The Whole Island, by Virgilio Piñera (2010, www.shearsman.com). His bilingual anthology The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry was published in 2009 by the University of California Press.