SHADBLOW

by Arlene Weiner

We’d go down to the end of Dyckman Street
to watch the trains, Mom and Teddy and I.
We’d wave at the locomotives, and the engineers
would wave back. A little family.
 
In spring we saw shad nets in the Hudson River.
There’s a tree called “shadblow” because 
it bloomed when the shad were running,
early spring.
 
We lived in Manhattan, in an apartment.
Trees in the park, fish displayed on ice 
in the window of the fish store. 
 
Near my grandmother’s apartment house,
one magnificent magnolia covered itself
with bloom, white blushed pink, every spring.

Arlene Weiner grew up in New York City and has lived in Pittsburgh for decades. She has been a Shakespeare scholar, a den mother, a cardiology technician, and an editor. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The New Verse News. Ragged Sky Press published three collections of her poetry. The most recent is More (2022).

LET'S ALL SPEAK SPANISH

by Arlene Weiner 

 

 

Let’s walk up and down
in front of ICE headquarters
speaking Spanish, let’s sing
“La Paloma” or “Guantanamera”
to ICE agents, and if
we don’t know Spanish
let’s sing “Frère Jacques”
or “O Tannenbaum”
or the “Marseillaise”
because will they know?
 
I wish I knew “Santa Lucia,”
a Neapolitan song my father,
an immigrant from Poland,
learned in the greenhorn class,
with which he sang me to sleep,
but instead I can sing “Volare”
or learn a song by Bad Bunny.
 
And if we don’t know any songs
in Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin,
Quechua, Vietnamese, Pashto,
Kreyol, let’s make up a language,
a language nobody understands
or everybody understands
and serenade them,
soothe the savage breasts.

 

 

Arlene Weiner lives in Pittsburgh, where she is active in community poetry groups. She has been a cardiology technician, a Shakespeare scholar, a den mother, and an editor. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry, the most recent More (2022). She also writes plays.

SWITCH

by Arlene Weiner

Source: Wikimedia Commons

For more than a decade, the West has faced off against the East again in what was widely called a new cold war. But with President Trump back in office, America is giving the impression that it could be switching sides. —The New York Times, February 18, 2025

The boys thought it would be fun
to throw the switch, watch trains
derail. It would be rich
to watch passengers tumble out,
scream. Maybe some would be naked.
 
There were deaths. The feral boys
didn’t care. Order and law
were boring. Boys would be boys
making noise, making money,
thinking it funny to upset sacred cows.
 
Watch it on Twitch, a sport
putting people through the woodchipper
the boys’ skipper, a double dipper, boasted,
who boosted his gaming scores.
Nobody came to stop the boys. 
 
Some men would be boys, breaking trust,
ghosting friends, tribal, looting, bribing,
gleeful masculine energy in a red hat. 

Arlene Weiner lives in Pittsburgh, where she is active in community poetry groups. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry, most recently More (2022).

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORD IN THE DICTIONARY

by Arlene Weiner

“Tariff,” Donald Trump has said many times, “is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” —The Guardian

Tariff?
More beautiful than cerulean? 
Than mother? Than home?
 
Something Arabian
about tariff: a perfume. 
Something elaborate: a fringe. 
 
Certainly more beautiful
than beautiful, bee-yoo-tiffle.
Related to giraffe? To sheriff?
 
A herd of tariffs, say, gathers
high-hanging fruit. A tariff
with a posse protects. 
 
And yes, Arabian: Wikipedia: 
The English term tariff
derives from the French: tarif…
 
a descendant of the Italian: tariffa,
from Medieval Latin: tariffe…  
from the Ottoman Turkish…
 
borrowed from the Persian…
The Persian term derives from Arabic:
 تعريف, ta rif.
 
To riff on tariff: What if 
the English, the French, the Italians, 
the Turks, the Persians
 
had taxed foreign tongues,
policed the borders of language,
put up walls?
We’d have no tariff, no beautiful tariff.

Arlene Weiner lives in Pittsburgh. She has been a copy editor, a den mother, a Shakespeare scholar, and a member of a group developing computer-based instruction. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. Ragged Sky Press has published three collections of her poetry: Escape Velocity, City Bird, and More. She also writes plays.