Late Again
— after Danusha Laméris
I ignore the meteorologist´s warning,
surge out of the house hoodless,
umbrella propped in the farthest corner
of my home, like a perspective
I´ve outgrown. I stride to work,
each cement block a sinkhole,
black coffee sloshing over the rim
of my Starbucks Venti. Clouds silver,
then gray, then shed their final white
wisps, yet the only threat I sense
overhead is my deadline, screeching
like some clawed creature on the brink
of extinction. The rain comes yards before
I reach my office, comes down in ribbons—
there are no overhangs on this street.
Through the blur, I swear I catch
the fractured pieces of my career
but it´s only a smashed bottle, each shard
as sharp as my boss´s daily tirades.
In a different poem, the tap tap tap
on my shoulder might be collapsed
scaffolding, portending the end. I might
kneel on the street, grind my knees
in someone else´s stupor, pray for sirens.
Or, I might call in sick, crackling my voice
for good measure, scan the neighborhood
for a trail out of the day´s grasp. But I turn,
see a crossing guard with an umbrella,
saying “Here honey, take mine. I have a hood.”
*
Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay Books and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II, published by Bottlecap Press. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, is forthcoming in 2025 with Kelsay Books. “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was selected as a 2023 finalist for Best of the Net, she won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for “Cumbre Vieja,” and she was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Burningword Journal, Gyroscope Review, ONE ART, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and others. She lives with her wife and children in Spain. You can find her at https://www.julieweisspoet.com/.
