1943

for Olga

Taste the malt and sweat of it, baby.
Slide across the laughter of it,

nude as a dew-swept field
at first light. If we´d lived then,

I´d have clutched your hand
to a blaze and not let go, there

in Vi´s speakeasy, where we´d have
grand slammed the world´s scorn

clear out of the era.
Where we´d have unbuttoned those

flowery dresses of convention,
down to our briefs and swagger,

down to the trickle of beer
I´d have spilled between your breasts,

knowing this time, you wouldn´t
have run or flinched. I´d have splayed

on a bar stool, legs wide enough
for fist or face, as we guzzled

the fear from each other´s bodies.
I´d have pilfered every damned tube

of regulation lipstick, smeared it
like mud across the mouths of those

who, scandalized by the swoon
in our slow dance, would have

dragged us downtown, bruised,
cuffed. Switch off the television.

Let´s pretend ourselves backwards.
Let me take you to a place where

the only broken bones are hushed
conversations laid to rest at last

while we, ghosts of our era,
bat sin after sin for the home team.

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay books, and a chapbook, The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, published by Bottlecap Press. Her "Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children" was selected as a finalist for Sundress´s 2023 Best of the Net anthology. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for her poem "Cumbre Vieja," was named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize, and was shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite´s 2021 Microchap Series. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in Rust + Moth, Orange Blossom Review, Sky Island Journal, and ONE ART, among others. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children.