Wednesday 25 September 2024

Four Poems by Peter Mladinic

 




Pat in Heaven 

 

Because he always said hello   

Because on his daily walks  

to combat diabetes he picked up trash 

 

Because at home and on campus  

at the school where he counselled students  

he left wakes of beauty  

 

Because his white shirts with the wine-red tie  

loose at the collar were a little tight  

because his wife Katie worked  

 

in the public library and never was at social 

gatherings, because they raised successful 

kids, one a Merrill-Lynch stockbroker  

 

Because he sat at a long table 

at basketball games with the buzzer  

keeping time, because he had two cocker  

 

spaniels at home and in his wallet  

pictures of grandkids he didn’t show  

all the time, because he had a mole  

 

like a thumbprint above his left temple 

and white hair that looked like a toupee, 

flat, a bit wavy, because he talked about 

 

the school at night in the mountains 

sitting in a foldout, beer in hand, around  

a fire, because he knelt in a pew  

 

in a church, black beads  

snaked around his hand, lips whispering 

prayers for the living, because he sat  

 

on a hill at dusk as bats flew  

in unison out of a cave, because he took  

me into his heart



 

 

Franciscan Brothers   

  

I’d hate being an editor, 

all that yes or no over and over.  

I couldn’t, well, if I had to.  

An editor is like a priest. 

Editors take a vow to read flakey poems. 

Priests take a vow of celibacy. 

If they break that vow, there’s hell to pay.  

I’d hate being a priest. I never had a calling,  

My calling wasn’t from God. 

The devil tapped my shoulder,   

put in his two cents 

and made me do it: assume 

a false identity. I wasn’t Art Vaught  

but George Roth 

wanting to know about the monastic life 

of a Franciscan, a Jesuit, a Benedictine.   

 

George’s mother thought he had a calling. 

He was thinking about giving his life to God 

not just as a lay person but hard core,  

like marine bootcamp, 

only it wasn’t a barracks bunk 

but a bed of nails George would sleep on.   

He was  

entertaining the idea, so thought Edith Roth.  

She projected: George 

saying mass, George sitting in a dark  

confessional, 

pulling back a slot, 

What are your sins?  Up to this point   

the only constructive  

thing he’d done in his thirteen years  

was to read  

a biography of Teddy Roosevelt. 

It was fun knowing those pamphlets and  

brochures 

from the Maryknolls, and the Brothers of  

Mercy, would arrive and  

be opened by George, or his mother. 

Not time shares in Cabo but a life 

within cloistered walls, from which he’d  

emerge 

to be called father, or brother.  

The priest pulls back the slot and hears the 

confession. 

The editor opens the email or the snail mail  

and reads the poem.  

Years after assuming George’s identity, 

I, Art Vaught, wrote “I Hate My Father.” 

The workshop loved it  

for its anger. They said let’s really see it!  

They thought it had merit, 

as did Edith, that her son had real potential.   

And so he did.



  

 

Geography 

 

In our basement classroom we studied  

Switzerland, Peru, Brazil, France.  Italy, 

shaped like a boot. But don’t ask me about  

Italy’s boot-heel. I liked dreaming Italy and 

Portugal, but wasn’t keen on imports,  

exports, sea levels, capitals. Our test, 

a jumble of facts, I barely passed. Sister John 

called our names by the grades we earned,  

from A's to F’s.  I walked up to the desk.  

“By the skin of your teeth, Richard Brennan,” 

she thrust the paper at me. I walked to my  

inkwell desk in the back. We had this rickety  

wooden floor, its slats buckled. Windows 

opened and closed by a long pole. Its steel  

fit into an eye in the window frame.  

So you had to reach up with the pole.  

I was never asked to. I guess Sister thought  

I was too short I’d waste time. One day she  

told me to go up to the corner, face the wall. 

My back turned to the twenty plus students, 

I felt far away, a small island off the coast  

of Columbia. I met brothers, Peter and  

Michael from Venezuela, but not in school. 

In school, fourth grade, we were Irish, Polish,  

Italian. Cesare, born in Italy, was small like 

me. Unlike me he got A's in Arithmetic.  

I failed arithmetic tests all the time. I only  

stood in corner once. Up really close  

to where the wall formed a corner. That’s all 

Today I stand up front, in the center. Sister’s  

big smooth hand, with a reddish tint, is on my  

shoulder. “Richard Brennan, he made an A 

on his attitude test. Tell them what you said,  

Richard.” In my white shirt and green tie 

I read: “I hate to fail, but I’m not afraid.”



 

 

Mary 

 

This was 1966, and I suspect she was born 

before 1910. Her face a bit wrinkled,  

pinched, glasses, neither short nor tall,  

neither heavyset nor especially thin, she  

reminds me of Mary, a bar manager  

I met some fifteen years later, only this  

woman, the only woman in the warehouse  

on the naval base in Cutler, had short grey  

hair, whereas Mary’s was dyed black, 

and she had a way of purring “More for you” 

with pursed lips, so it sounded like a cat’s  

meow when she thought someone wanted  

another beer. This woman in Cutler  

had Mary’s pinched face, only she didn’t  

work behind a bar but in the office  

that led out to the warehouse. Also there 

in the office were seaman Dennis O’ Connor, 

Lieutenant J.G. Cutter, and Chief Alvarez, 

who, like the woman in the office, was  

pleasant, even cheerful, once joking to us  

in the warehouse the familiar, chauvinistic,  

“There's three things I never loan out: my  

wife, my toothbrush, and my car.” It’s funny  

what you remember of people. Chief was  

Filipino, short, muscular, with a round,  

youthfully handsome face and a trim pencil  

‘stash. Not razor thin, but the handsomest  

moustache of that kind that I’ve ever seen. 

He wasn’t in the warehouse too often.  

I worked in the warehouse with R. K. Brown,  

Gary Hanson, and Dwight David Baer,  

whom we called D.D. No one called Brown  

R.K. It was always Brown. He supervised  

the warehouse. I remember the faces of all  

the men more clearly than the woman  

because I saw her least of all the people  

I mentioned.  One day O’Connor, on the  

short side, and chubby to the point of being  

overweight, commented that his paper work  

(mental work) was more arduous than our  

physical work. The office was long,  

with a line of windows that looked out  

at a lawn, whereas the only window  

in the warehouse was square like an ‘8 x '11 

sheet of paper, and centered in the door 

to which Brown had the key. He kept a ring  

of keys at his waist, wore a moustache  

(not as trim as Chief’s), chewed gum,  

and sang in a high alto, quietly, to himself. 

The woman’s glasses were on a chain.



 

Peter Mladinic's most recent book of poems, House Sitting, is available from Anxiety Press. An animal rights  advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States. 

 

  

 

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