Stefi Weisburd is the author of two books:  The Wind-Up Gods (Black Lawrence Press, 2007), which won the St. Lawrence Book Award and Barefoot: Poems for Naked Feet (Wordsong, 2008), a collection for children.  She received a "Discovery"/The Nation prize, was a Scholar at Bread Loaf and was awarded a writing residency by the Lannan Foundation.  Her poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, The Threepenny Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review and others.  Barefoot was named one of Bank Street College's 2009 Best Children's Books of the Year. Born in Los Angeles and with degrees in physics from UC Berkeley and Stanford University, Weisburd lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she has worked as a science writer and science outreach coordinator.

Little God Origami
 
The number of corners in the soul can’t
compare with the universe’s dimensions folded
neatly into swans.  In the soul’s
space, one word on a thousand pieces
of paper the size of cookie fortunes falls
from the heavens.  At last, the miracle
cure, you cry, pawing at the scraps that twirl
like seed-pod helicopters.  Alas, the window
to your soul needs a good scrubbing, so
the letters doodle into indecipherables just
like every remedy that has rained
down through history, and you realize
in your little smog of thought that death
will simply be the cessation of asking, a thousand
cranes unfolding themselves and returning to the trees.   
                                                
First appeared in Poetry

Mittelschmerz near Menopause
 
Lumbering though the day’s
dregs accruing in the pelvic

pit, I want to drown
in bed, birth the damn cabbages

with their hot breath.  I want to haul
ache off bone like taffy.  Peacocks

strut in the gut.  Journey,
be done with me.  Can’t you pass

without dragging your spurs
through the scenery?  Awe

grows by the river, but it is a
bitter flower.  Such heavy

machinery for a mere nit,
a pinpoint of gel spit from

this month’s anemone.
Two weeks later:  an opera.

Love’s sad fortune drains
down my legs, staining

the white tile in wild roses.
 
First appeared in Poetry

Mountain Stream
 
even in July
the stones
huddle
in green shawls of algae

the pussy willows
are busy knitting mittens

water glitters
with a blizzard of light

my body is sweltering with summer
but even in July
my icy feet know
the mountain
is thinking snow

From Barefoot: Poems for Naked Feet (Wordsong, 2008)

© 2009 Stefi Weisburd