At 52 Minnie Weiss needed love <br />to be loved <br />perhaps more than any woman <br />I’d ever known <br />so each day at Spinoza HS <br />we’d go through the ritual <br />her asking me if I’d found a guy for her <br />and me saying not yet, but definitely <br />still looking <br />well, what could I say <br />all my friends were married <br />and if not, a bit out of alignment like <br />Bob Benney, obsessed with his final victory <br />at the track <br />never to arrive of course <br />plus overweight <br />with a permanent purple boil <br />quivering on the left side of his forehead <br />or Ernie, paranoid <br />believing the government <br />spied on him through light bulbs <br />but only when turned on <br />so candles lit his apartment <br />TV the same—watching him, <br />electricity the secret weapon. <br />Frank Weigi held out hope <br />he lived in my building <br />and had just retired at 55 <br />and loneliness would soon seep in <br />then true to my word <br />I set up Weiss and Weigi <br />but the man didn’t pay for dinner <br />probably still haunted by memories <br />of crushing poverty in Louisiana. <br />Minnie wrote him off as cheap <br />and he was cheap <br />but for her— the ultimate curse <br />yet not the real one <br />another <br />blocked Minnie’s heart <br />her arms empty <br />grasping air <br />the unfathomable certainty <br />of the gift <br />eluding her tears.<br /><br />Charles Chaim Wax<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/profoundly-skilled-in-agony/
