Three Poems by Steve Klepetar

 

Wrap the Kaleidoscope

The blue-green violin, the frightened zebra 

surrounded by wondrous plants, a hole 

burned in the sky. Sounds leaking from bushes, 

songs written in dry grass where salamanders 

sometimes gathered to nibble wind-tossed leaves.

Someone painted this, the strange man who held 

a glass of port, who smeared colours with his other hand.

He kept his pants up with rope. Once he dropped a marble 

on the cobblestones and laughed when the homeowner 

challenged him. From that day, he only crossed over 

garage roofs, took the long way round to the bakery 

on 108th Street. This may not make sense to you, 

but believe me, he’d had a scare. Such angry voices 

on the sidewalk, such a scuffle by the bushes and the trash.

Still, he held his packages. Even in extremity he didn’t break 

the eggs. Their were many gorillas, many giant squids. 

Of course those were only movies, but his imagination 

had been stirred. He could dream with the best of them, 

wake up beaded with sweat, struggling to breathe. 

“Here”, his lover said, as she propped herself up on her arm, 

“have a cough drop.” And so the night progressed, 

a solemn ship sailing the netherworld toward the edge of dawn.

Encounter

Sitting at the counter, she drinks coffee through a straw.

You might think she is on her way to work, 

but she is on her way to another universe.

Unlike most of us, she can have it both ways.

The writing on her sweatshirt reads 

I have really cool tattoos under here, but I’m cold.

You have been cold a long time, standing in the snow.

You have spent hours looking up at the moon.

Tonight you are drinking coffee through a straw, 

like a woman on her way to another world.

You are drinking the stars, the wind, the drifting snow. 

You have no piercings, no tattoos. 

Your skin has turned pink, your hair frozen in place. 

Who will save your place in line? 

Where will you get lunch? All these daily tasks 

frustrate you, leave you bending to the earth to stir dead leaves.

Old Bears

You sit in silence 

as the moon seems to burn 

in a cold, black sky. 

Your face burns, 

your eyes are spears. 

All night I worried 

you would fall, 

that your heart 

would fail, 

that the final storm 

would drown us all. 

I wanted you to live 

past the decade, 

until so many 

words piled up, 

padding against 

vast silence, 

so we could sleep

easy and safe, 

old bears in an icy cave.

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.