After a Stranger Called This a Hobby by Julie Weiss

After a Stranger Called This a Hobby

In one hour, the clock has ticked off eight

words. The moon yawns. The stars clear

their throats, but I need to wrap tonight´s

grief in a metaphor, all glitter and ribbon,

drop it on the world´s doorstep before

plodding back to my body. Because

I can´t sleep until I brush this poem

off my eyelids. Because a good father

deserves to rest in transcendence.

Once, I was dumped hard and spent months

flailing like a sailor shoved overboard

until a poet who lived on the other side

of time threw me a rope braided

with images of love´s hurricane lips.

At nine years old, a nightmare lured me

into a coffin, slammed the lid shut.

The next morning, words tumbled

out of my mouth like hysterical pebbles,

a poem I scratched as if digging. As if

punching life´s calamities in the nose.

My children kneel beside a stream

where a fish floats sideways, one eye

daring the sky to blink first. Their anguish

clings to my skin—if grandpa falls

up there, will he scrape his knees

on an asteroid? What is death, I write,

but a final grand stanza, followed

by an ellipsis? Every night, I dismantle

myself, drop blood, bone, vein, nerve,

heart onto paper. Hobby this, I say

and walk away, flipping the stranger

a raven.

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection, two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II, and Rooming with Elephants, her second collection, published in February 2025. Her work appears in Variant Lit, The Westchester Review, Up The Staircase Quarterly, and is forthcoming in Cimarron Review. She lives with her wife and children in Spain. You can find her at https://www.julieweisspoet.com/.