Mark Weiss

Variations on a Pun


1
Sin in Cuba
is a dead fish.
Pe'cado pescado
which stinketh
in the nose of.


Unlike their skins
the hair which covered them was of one color.
Only shaved was it clear which species.
Somehow their kind could discriminate for mating.
The mechanism was unclear.
Perhaps grooming
became an instrument of choice.
What does it matter, one could ask,
now that they’re all extinct?


Which sperm was it quickened the egg,
and is it still remembered?


Like any snake
I scavenge eggs.


With fame will come
release from pain, he thinks,
and sings.


2
Prey to predator or prey to hunger.
Satiation, then
starvation.
On the big rock candy mountain.


Original fish
stinketh to heaven.


A transformation
between sea and seafood.


Pe’cado, sin a speck, a
feck-fish.
It’s the wolf’s hunger
saves the world,
satiety that ends it.


3
After three days rose,
the scent impeccable.


I ordered sin, and the flesh of kings
committed fish in the reign of surfn’turf.


Dead fish to fish to peace
which swimmeth in living waters.


***


Small Attentions


Sometimes the young
are spit and snot.


Mother and son.
She watches, poised with a napkin, as her boy conveys
the soup from bowl to mouth.


Father and daughter.
She’s in a trance, but a gentle tug
pulls her back from the traffic.


Rapt as prey and predator.


Islands and rocks traced with faces.


A man with a long-shanked hammer at each station makes a show
of tapping a wheel. He rests between trains.


Provisional nature of the life of all or any.


The crowd follows the shade.


Ways to move in a circle.


“Someone put his hand in your pants girl
you walk around so.”


He barely noticed the mole that would kill her.


***


Cat Thoughts


1
The kindness of strangers is not unfailing.
Sly cat
has no use for me. Others
drop food for it


It shuns the magic finger
but thinks again,
returns.


Licks its ass. Breakfast
with a reminder of dinner.


But cats become tiresome,
and he shoos it away.
It plays at mouse.


2
The bird of peace
nonetheless edible.
As one eats the god.


Hunger says the cat
brings down the bird.


***
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