Franny Weed

Bike Shorts, No Underwear

I leave my house with dirty hands

because I can wash them in your bathroom.

I avoided you because I saw in you avoidance.

A cleaner reason isn’t with me now and

won’t come when called.

I even sat for it, asked for it, pleased for it,

with my hands pressed against each other

incontrovertible prayer.

But now I am the dinner scallop

thirsty in my bath.

In the morning, with cold jade stones,

we will carve our faces out

from the clay that inflated them.

You’ll blush.

And I'll come back home

with your hands in my pocket.

I will always, rhetorically, come back.

False Spring

As if all I could write about with the sun on my face

was the sun on my face

If that was the case, I don’t exist in the trees anymore

cause I climbed down

Is it a fault of vision or imagination?

Ice lets change feel like itself

and before the first bite

unripe oranges taste real

In Maine, I face west

where the water is interrupted by a dark moss

The only memory I have of Berkeley is standing at an intersection

where the wind hollows the sun’s promise

There is, likewise, a man I know—

says he wants to connect

and when I look through glass: I believe it!

Look how his absence makes shadows of the rocks

Look how he makes the houses on the water edge

look like they’re facing him with freckled brick

And look at that good pity he brings in!

I get to feel bad for the coast side he neglects

But when I step outside and feel

the wind

I wish again to know him through the car window

where heat can be delivered

by the shade of the sun alone

Franny Weed is a poet, playwright, and filmmaker living in Brooklyn.