Weather People
Anna Nicolić
People don’t take what they can get. They take what they can give up. As for me—only after I arrived at nothing else to be, did I become a person. Anyway, children, this a Ghazal, or the shifty bastard of one American poets like. I’ve written it three, four times. It’s about me and a person and a person. My date bought the gin so I feministly covered the cranberry juice. Guess that’s what you do, drink until you can act like a person. 24 hour Mobil Mart or; the cradle at the edge of the dark parking lot we made of Earth. I’ve never met someone confident they were a person. The lady manning the register resembled a poltergeist with a wrist brace. I never know whether it is kind or cruel to humor a crazy person. “Jeez this weather is something else five degrees yesterday can’t do nothing when I feel it in my bones makes you want to stay inside makes it hard to be a person at least it’s better today but no it’s not gotten better today in case you haven’t noticed I’m one of those weather people The weather makes my whole day I’m a weather person.” I tried to scrape my change off the counter like how now I’m scraping this encounter into some meaning of what it’s like to be a person. Well my date must have been inspired too; I saw the inspiration come to him like heat rising from summered asphalt. Jot that in the margins; how crazy reveals on a person. Him, through taut grin: “The groundhog didn’t see his shadow. Spring is coming soon.” And I thought, Can we ever premeditate our affect on another person? “Really? (dawn emerged from her face, all at once with no memory of shyness or winter. Hold still, glimpse the child, which crouches within every person) When’s the first day?” He told her it was tomorrow. I said nothing, eyes falling from person to person. “Really?” It was the way she said it. Some people carry all their hope on their person. “Ha ha!—No.” I followed him outside. At the edge of the poem it was cold. I touched his jacket, spoke. “You’re a fucked-up person.” And two people laugh. And I’m wondering what this poem will be about. Maybe about being a person. Or how to love a person. Or how to love being a person. This is only a draft. Every rewording feels like forgetting. I want to recall what I once thought the point was. Maybe it’ll come back if I refer to you in third-person. I am not a weather person. I am a weather-person person.
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