Winter Eclipse, and: Slicing Peaches

WINTER ECLIPSE / Jon Weinberg Scant moonlight and frost trickle and shine between the peach groves. The grasses bend white in the farmhand's sleep and my bed is a parcel of fog rising from the tules. They say the river won't crack till February and tonight my neighbor, the schizoid, is taking a turn for the worse. Young boys trade peeks at the girl next door who fans her winter breasts into the mirror and the bees have frozen to death inside the bramble. The sun has closed its umbrella to the drunks who seal themselves into condemned garages and beat their legs to check the cold while the wind teeters outside the window. And I imagine your eyes inside me, Aunt Jutta, leading me across the old vacant lot, straddling the pigeon paths as if they were wide waters toward your house, under a sky ladled with snow and nourished by silence. And I can see you straining out of your stiff bed to find me at the doorstep still inhaling the vapors of your death, and you waving me in, allowing one quick glance into that obscure cogwheel of stars where you now live. The Missouri Review · 299 SLICING PEACHES / Jon Veinberg Under the drone of the swamp cooler And the rhythm of flies battling the screen A woman slices peaches for her crippled husband Though he's already up to his shoulders in earth And falls asleep within the precise moment she starts humming. She pictures him in a room stashed full of silver and light The splintered boat of his body knocking the waves Cutting past the pollen of marine grass and sea musk Only to awaken to the sound of glass crashing in the kitchen And the thin veil of music rising from her mouth And to the smell of peaches fermenting In a room that was once all too familiar. To dream of the living as if they were dead brings on storms And the woman watches the wind's slow tease on the elms And the sky so rinsed in murk It would be impossible to enter heaven today. Lost in the swirling thoughts of weather the woman Accidentally severs her finger at the joint and forgets That today is Saturday, the neighbors will be garaging the dogs And fighting sleep in order to drink all night and how once 200 · The Missouri Review A girl stabbed her boyfriend with a barbeque fork For talking too much about nothing. Beyond the red roofs she hears a cat shrieking In a voice that could be her own, Tired of anticipating the turning over Of the cool and indifferent stars And how her finger will float unnoticed in a bowl of peaches— A tiny fiber of the world browning in nectar. Later revealing to the neighbors her small gap of absence And the lacerated tendon left numb to the touch. Jon Veinberg The Missouri Review · 202 ...