Three Poems by Steve Klepetar

 

Water and Sand

 

This story ends when night falls and the windows are covered with silk.

Long before that, the older sister will break the piano bench.

She is in love with a boy who spends his free time climbing trees, 

but she is afraid of heights.

Her younger sister plays the viola in the high school orchestra.

She is into Hayden and Bach, indifferent to boys and trees.

The sisters love to get frozen yogurt at the mall, and they sing 

about windows and silk, boys and trees. A talent agent hears them,

offers an audition as backup singers for a fading star 

who’s rumoured to be addicted to a street drug called Mesmer 2. 

The singer loves the sisters, especially the elder, because she hungers

for a man who cuts down trees, but has rejected her advances 

until she gets clean. You would think the girls’ parents 

would have something to say, but this isn’t that kind of story. 

The parents work, eat take out, stream movies and TV shows 

and post about their worries on Facebook. They have many followers.

Mostly they stay locked in their rooms. Their daughters 

become backup singers, then stars. The author has forgotten 

about windows covered with silk and the broken piano bench. 

Now he follows the younger sister, who writes songs 

about a strange man who left his shadow behind 

when he slipped away from his previous life as a mage or priest.

One day she gets criticized for her political views, 

or not having political views. Someone calls out her innocuous tats.

Now the story ends at the shore, where the sisters go to eat clams 

and listen to the radio. Waves roll in, waves roll out. 

It’s like a film from 1967, with the last shot nothing but water and sand.

 

 

Cruelty

 

All day long you wonder, as the river 

sweeps toward the rocks below.

Can cruelty be breathed in or taken 

with the warm bread on your plate? 

And now the night sky, 

a nearly full moon burning a ring of clouds. 

Today you cleaned and baked, walked 

nearly nine miles up the muddy trail. 

You spoke quietly on the phone, you read

again and again of the dreadful, spinning world.

You felt blood rise in your aching arm, 

you nearly fell asleep even though the house 

felt empty and cold. Where is the music 

of tranquility? Can’t weeping cease, as wind 

bends young trees on the edge of this smoky pond?

 

 

Chocolate Sauce

 

Who ever behaves as you would expect?. 

When my mother came home from work, 

rattled because of the man who believed 

he was an ice box, I laughed until I slipped 

on the wet kitchen floor. I banged my knee 

and soaked my favourite shirt. 

Soon we were both laughing, 

though she kept shaking her head, no, no, 

it’s not funny. My sister had about enough, 

became a bicycle, sped off down the highway 

that ran through our yard and didn’t stop 

until she got to Corona or Katona, 

I forget which, and married a guy with hair 

made of golden rope. I guess he loved her 

smile and chain. They had kids, but we never 

saw them, except at trial. We were a close family 

until we weren’t. l gave up talking because 

no matter what I said, someone had said it before 

and probably better. From then on all I did 

was watch TV and eat ice cream, 

like someone who knew they were going 

to die. I stayed alive for awhile, though, 

and got very fat and my eyesight suffered. 

Then I saw a commercial for a gym. 

Then I saw one for a lite beer. 

Then I saw one for a hamburger piled 

six inches high, with a pyramid of French fries. 

My mother came home from work again.

She saw me trying to do pushups 

into my ice cream bowl. Who’s laughing now, 

she asked and I really wondered what she meant. 

Nobody was laughing, the ceiling had fallen in 

and it had begun to rain. I was in love 

with a woman in a cartoon,  not the pretty one 

in the tight skirt but her friend

who wore glasses and overalls and could fix 

toasters and cars. I would marry her tomorrow 

and travel the world with my violin, my violets, my violence. 

It was all I could do to hold my spoon straight, lick out the chocolate sauce.

Steve Klepetar lives in the Shire (Berkshire County, in Massachusetts, that is). His work has appeared widely and has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Family Reunion and The Li Bo Poems.