Tag: Spain

Miracle Girl by Julie Weiss

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Miracle Girl
              –Adamuz, Córdoba, January 18th, 2026

Six and barefoot, you falter
along the rails like a phantom

in limbo, though you´re very
much alive. Virtually unscathed,

reporters will say, despite
the wreckage around you.

Despite the bodies, writhing
like unanswered questions,

or still as a billion-year-old
mountain. The bewilderment

of limbs you crawled over
to reach the broken window.

At what point in your search
for your family does your mind

ramshackle, fracture under
the dead weight of despair?

At what point are your thoughts
launched off their tracks?

Maybe when a barn owl
screeches, or a big rig thunders

past the tragedy that will define
the rest of your life. Soon,

all of Spain will illuminate you
in halo. Miracle girl, they´ll say.

As a civil guard leads you
away, maybe you hear voices

among the debris—your cousin,
your brother, mostly mamá

and papá. At what point will you
understand they´re phantoms

now, crashing towards you
from the wrong side of the divide?

*

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, was published in 2025. “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was a finalist for Best of the Net. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for “Cumbre Vieja” and was a finalist for the Saguaro Prize. Her recent work appears in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Gyroscope Review, ONE ART, and is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, The Indianapolis Review, and MER. She lives with her wife and children in Spain. You can find her at julieweisspoet.com

After Calculating the Cost of a Trip from Spain to California by Julie Weiss

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After Calculating the Cost of a Trip from Spain to California

I can´t ask them to catch the bits
of grief falling out of my voice
like marbles or bottlecaps. Falling

onto our kitchen tiles like a clatter
of coins, whose designs have corroded
beyond recognition. How many times

have they winged it around the neighborhood,
tilting and dipping, a sparkle of clouds
in their eyes? The whir, the rumble,

turbulence of laughter as they land
on top of each other, in a field that refuses
to flower a runway. Some planes never

take off, no matter the years of toil
fueling their engines. How long
since I felt decades disintegrate

in the dizzying crush of a first hug,
since my parents pressed memories
into my spine, as if working clay

in the urgent minutes before it starts
to dry? My children´s hands are too
small to grasp the plans we´d packed

into a suitcase of premature dreams,
now a heap of follies I hurry to sweep
into the trashcan along with breadcrumbs,

eggshells, candy wrappers as wrinkled
as their grandparents´ kisses
filtered through a computer screen.

The clam chowder doesn´t quite cool
to the temperature of resignation before
I spoon some into our bread bowls.

It never does. The crust goes down
hard, sours my throat. My children
chatter about the pot of gold at the end

of a bridge they may never cross as I fold
their grannies´ laps into my pocket,
brace myself for another summer without.

*

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay Books. She was a finalist in Alexandria Quarterly´s First Line Poetry Series, shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite´s 2021 Microchap Series, and she has been named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her recent work appears in Gyroscope Review, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Sky Island Journal, and others. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children.