Profoundly Skilled In Agony Poem by Charles Chaim Wax

At 52 Minnie Weiss needed love
to be loved
perhaps more than any woman
I’d ever known
so each day at Spinoza HS
we’d go through the ritual
her asking me if I’d found a guy for her
and me saying not yet, but definitely
still looking
well, what could I say
all my friends were married
and if not, a bit out of alignment like
Bob Benney, obsessed with his final victory
at the track
never to arrive of course
plus overweight
with a permanent purple boil
quivering on the left side of his forehead
or Ernie, paranoid
believing the government
spied on him through light bulbs
but only when turned on
so candles lit his apartment
TV the same—watching him,
electricity the secret weapon.
Frank Weigi held out hope
he lived in my building
and had just retired at 55
and loneliness would soon seep in
then true to my word
I set up Weiss and Weigi
but the man didn’t pay for dinner
probably still haunted by memories
of crushing poverty in Louisiana.
Minnie wrote him off as cheap
and he was cheap
but for her— the ultimate curse
yet not the real one
another
blocked Minnie’s heart
her arms empty
grasping air
the unfathomable certainty
of the gift
eluding her tears.