Four Poems by Peter Mladinic

 

Message in a Bottle

 

I took a green bouquet in my left hand

to the ocean. Ocean flowers,

green roses for your green eyes, Mother.

 

Take my imperfect love bundle, Mother

who rocked in arms, as I slept,

whose body vessel brought me this shore.

 

Carry me on nothing to fear,

take this me-dream green destiny of forget

into your bosom’s roses, ghost,

sky flame, ship minuscule on the horizon

of boarded glass.

 

Where ocean and years hover,

plums drop from branches,

near a window a white cloth’s gold crumbs

leave no trace

at all.  Your hands’ oblivion knuckles clouds.

The sea’s drowning hand waves far out.

I think it time, retaliation, the eyes in a face

of sand, the answer that is and is not.

 

I fling feebly to your vast

wave crested nothing, ashes.  Kisses

of milk-box near steps

cloud the curved bottle’s message:

the all of a corner’s broom, April showers.

 

Roses of the sea lie on the ocean floor.

Apples fall from eternity’s green branches.

 

Up and Out

 

Champion pole vaulter Bob Richards is up,

the abandoned air base is out.  Bob

Richards, not to be confused with the great

Wendy Richard of East Enders and

Are You Being Served?, vaults on the box

of Wheaties, breakfast of champions

and with strength, skill epitomizes Up,

as does the air base Out: lots of macadam

to venture out to where earth meets sky,

 

a body could walk forever runways empty

of aircraft.  Cracks with weeds form

a pattern, as did Bob Richards with his up,

over the bar, down, pattern of practice to be

in the Olympics and at meets that lacked

Olympic fanfare. All it took to do that up

and over, his one aid a pole, moves me,

as does the airbase’s abandon,

its lots of walk out far as the eye can see,

 

its horizontal, like its sky, void of gliders and

planes. Though a few years back, a glider

fell, its pilot’s life lost, I heard. I wasn’t there

then. I was in a room without windows,

monitoring students writing to a prompt

called Now I’m Paying for It. 

Each had a different It, most, a lot to say.

I wasn’t sure that prompt would work.

One by one, they stood and read aloud.

 

Chapter from an Egyptian Novel

 

He looks for his lost love

only to find that she died

and that he attended her funeral

and didn’t know it.

He dreams about his father

taking him into a cemetery

pointing to a stone and saying son

this is your grave.

He searches for his lost love.

He plays the piano.

A bird flies through an open window

and then out the window.

He marries a woman

with green eyes, they have a son

a house on a lake.

He searches for his lost love

the love of his youth

the girl who was like a rainbow

a mountain an orange flower a river.

He was not aware the funeral

he had attended

was for her.

He worked at a large

company, so large

he didn’t know his supervisor,

except in name, whose

wife died.

And out of a sense of obligation

partly out of sympathy

partly out of boredom,

he straightened his tie in

a mirror and then took

his seat among mourners.

It was her coffin up there,

in a pavilion, on a

platform.  He

could barely see it

through all the flowers.

Selfie

 

“She even thinks that up in heaven

Her class lies late and snores”

I see, it’s a poem printed on a white board.

I’m with you, behind the bulk of gold

podium.  All these desks. I just popped in.

While it’s just you and I..see, I know

my pronoun cases. Cases, Casey.

 

Jose said to George, She was just a kid.

You came into her bedroom, unzipped…

the unmentionable, Jose nailed it.

A father flies across the courtroom,

a bailiff pries father fingers from Jose’s

throat, but George...Score one for Jose.

It worked. I walked out a free woman.

 

You’d think a father...I never knew Caylee’s.

What happened?  You’ve read about

Cindy a nurse, George a doting grandpa ,

the backyard pool, the shallow grave,

Zanny the Nanny, Universal Studios

I work there. I’m here, with you.

What’s the weather like in Orlando?

 

Do I like chocolate martinis?

I like to party, the Orlando club scene.

I’ll toast a memory, Casey Anthony,

Mother of the Year!  Tone is everything. 

Jose, demonstrative, emphatic,

to George, “your daughter’s mouth!”

Caylee’s taped corpse, Zanny the Nanny.

 

You’ve written, If you take “even”

from the first line, the poem

is no longer Cullen’s classic quatrain

“To a Lady I Know.”  Tone, nuance..

I should write fiction. Casey Anthony,

Mother of the Year. This podium

you hide behind. All these empty desks.

 

While it’s just you and I, let’s you hold

the iPhone, there, mom of the year’s

arm round prof of the year’s shoulder.

Don’t get that “she even thinks..”

in the picture. Big smile, here at Clovis

Community College, you and me,

big smile, lie our way to the truth.

Peter Mladinic’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is due out in November 2023 from Better Than Starbucks Publications.  An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.