FIVE: Work by Marina Weisburg

Cry Baby

I’ve imagined myself slamming my door and yelling “I hate you Mom, I’m dying my hair black.”
But I don’t hate my mom, and my hair is already black.
I never even slam doors because once, my sister slammed a mirrored door and it shattered on my dad.

The first time I saw my mom cry I was experimenting with my vocabulary like all other asshole middle schoolers.
I called her and said “Where you at dawg?”
I came home and she was crying and sitting on this completely impractical antique chair that I hate.
And she was crying and sweating and so sad because she thought I was calling her a dog.

The first time I saw my dad cry we were watching To Kill a Mockingbird.
We looked at each other at the same second and I saw that his eyes were all wet.
He was embarrassed and I felt like a daughter.

The first time my boyfriend saw me cry, he told me it made him feel closer to me.
That’s when I started really fucking hating him.

But I’m always tearing. I have a tear duct problem or something, or maybe it’s just how my face works. And I’m always wiping my face because tears are always just falling out of my eyes and I can’t even help it and people constantly ask me if I’m ok. And whenever someone asks me if I’m ok, I actually feel like I’m gonna cry.

my fantasy, baby

Harry Styles telling me to come back to bed

Telling someone at a water cooler that I’m slammed with work, rolling my eyes way back

Running into acquaintances really gracefully

Mistletoe

FOUR: Work by Marina Weisburg

Margaret Tickle

Margaret told me not to laugh when she told me her middle name. She used to wear a white down-jacket zipped all the way to the top everyday because her mom wasn’t ready to accept that she needed a real bra. When her mom, a writer, finally took her bra shopping, she wrote a short story about it. She called the story “iPex,” after the make and model of Margaret’s first bra.  Her mom submitted it to a local publication that was widely circulated around the neighborhood. Margaret continued to wear her white zipped up down-jacket. Margaret loved wearing clogs, she loved blueberry smoothies, and she was the clumsiest person I’d ever met. All of these factors considered, she often had a blueberry smoothie covered white-down jacket. Margaret Tickle  will always be a twelve-year-old girl wearing a too technologically advanced bra.

THREE: Work by Marina Weisburg

Texas (Ghazal)

I’d lick a prickly pear in Odessa, Texas
Wear a blue bonnet in the breeze of Corpus Christi

Throw clown noses at cacti in Eden

Skip class to crunch on tumbleweeds
and pick the bones out of my teeth in Seagrave, Texas

I’d chase armadillos on a pogo stick
Go skinny-dipping in an oil well in Sweetwater

In the Permian Basin, rain evaporates
before it hits the ground

I have never been to Texas
I will probably never go to Texas

Madeline

We saw
the woman with soft smelling hair
flirting with our dad

They were sitting outside on the porch swing
talking quietly

We saw
mom in the kitchen
shifting everything
an inch to the left

We brought out spoonfuls of ketchup
and ate them
one full spoon of sugary tomato each
staring right at them,
at her

And they knew how much of an insult it was
by my grin,
identical to yours
and by how quickly we ran away

You’re the only person I’ll ever love.
Which is ok.
Because I really love you.

TWO: Work by Marina Weisburg

People Who Are Happier Than Me

1.     People who wear clogs

2.     People who breakdance or at least know the helicopter move

3.     My friend who has a job at a literal GOLD MINE after he graduates

4.     My friend in New York who wears cobalt silk dresses and gets bottle service with the sparklers every weekend

5.     People who fart freely in yoga classes

6.     Daniel Gatenio, he put posters up around the school that said LOOFAHS ARE FOR ONE because his little sister used his loofah once without asking

7.     Gold Retrievers, people who look like them, people who own them

8.     People who have been to India or have spent a significant amount of time in Southeast Asia

9.     Me in 5th grade when I discovered Mountain Dew

10.  People who like Ladybugs even though they are just spotted beetles

11.  People who drive VW Beetles

12.  People who don’t make highly specified lists of people happier than them

13.  People who play brass instruments, some string, and most woodwind

14.  People who like to sketch prairie landscapes

15.  Hot Moms and Sexy Dads

16.  My parents (not hot or sexy). They’ve been married for 35 years, they own a tandem bicycle, and I think they might actually love each other

17.  People who have been called a “National Treasure” by someone

18.  People from California, Colorado, most of Wisconsin, and people who proudly say they’re from New Jersey and not “basically New York”

19.   This girl in one of my classes freshman year who used a silver-glitter-gel pen to take notes on the Bosnian Genocide

20.  My grandmother who told me “I never forgive, but sometimes I forget”

ONE: Work by Marina Weisburg

Gibson Beach, 2001

As I was stuck in the riptide
swallowing mouthfuls of salt water
an ear of corn floated towards me
like a poisonous buoy
or a buoyant rotisserie

Trying to keep my neck out of water
the cob rolled in the beachy foam

Drowning, and Hungry.

Swim along the beach
parallel to the beach
but I can’t keep my eyes off that bobbing cob

grilled corn
corn on the cob
popcorn
corn chowder
candy corn
corn crème brûlée
kernels of corn sprinkled on an ice cream sundae

I closed my eyes
and dipped my sun burnt face
into the boiling pot of corn
choking on
the popcorn curdling over the edges
the surf spitting out
flecks of hot butter

let’s solve this popcorn mystery
I know the way through this kelpie corn maze

I am the corncob queen
I wear a corncob hat
and rule with a corncob staff
I grin
and my teeth are yellow kernels
lined up like tombstones