Inside the Conscious Earth, All Shifts are Inscribed

-Florence Weinberger

April 25, 2011

I know people Hitler couldn’t kill,

but he swept distant farmlands clean of them,

chased them down and out of their old brick Hapsburg apartment houses,

a few diamonds in the hems of their winter coats.

Just in time, before they ran out of time, they dropped like spies with parachutes

into Shanghai, Australia, the Bronx.

Every hat and pair of shoes they carried became a new language,

every broken song joined the dissonant jazz of their landings,

every piece of rage became a tree or a red front door.

A few remained what they had always been:

tailors, diamond-cutters, stand-up comics.

Florence Wienberger is the author of three published collections of poetry,The Invisible Telling Its Shape (Fithian Press,1997) and Breathing Like a Jew (Chicory Blue Press, 1997), and Carnal Fragrance, (Red Hen Press, 2004), and the forthcoming Sacred Graffiti, to be published by Tebot Bach. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her  poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Another Chicago Magazine, Antietam Review, The Comstock Review, The Pedestal, Solo, Rattle and Spillway, and anthologies such as Family Reunion: Poems About Parenting Grown Children, So Luminous the Wildflowers, Images From the Holocaust, and Lifecycles: Jewish Women on Biblical Themes in Contemporary Life.

Copyright 2011 Florence Weinberger/The New Vilna Review.