PROSE POETRY​

LENORE WEISS

THINGS THAT SWING IN SPACE


Maybe the Earth sounds like my dryer each time it completes a rotation. The astronauts never mentioned it; if they did, we would know. The way scientists have studied whale songs, identified codas from families who dive in the cold winter’s deep. The world sings on a tripped axis, but how does it sound? Classical? Blues? Jazz? Launch a microphone and swing from a star? A prompt that sparks inspiration, maybe a phrase, not having a menstrual period for 30 years, remembering my own check marks on the calendar, and how, when the blood of my body encountered a new latticework, the zipping of hummingbirds unlaced me. I wonder how, I wonder how we can hold our own in this crazy world that has pinned and paper clipped us, butterflies on a pasteboard, with a note to self: we will get through this. But there’s freedom in a coming to terms, the slow dancing, the two-stepping in silence until it's time for the ball. The glittering ball that hangs over my head. The total white-out.
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​Lenore’s poetry collections form a trilogy about love, loss, and being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012); Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hakodesh Word Press, 2017). Her most recent poetry chapbook is From Malls to Museums (Ethelzine, 2020). Alexandria Quarterly Press published her prize-winning flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love. She wrote and published a book for children, The Glimmerine, an environmental urban fantasy. Lenore tutors middle-school and high-school students in Oakland, California. Her personal blog can be found at www.lenoreweiss.com.