Three Poems by Steve Klepetar

 

What the Chef Said

He wiped his hands on a towel the color of dusk  

and said, listen, every dish is a kind of confession.  

The anchovies whisper secrets you can’t repeat,  

the artichoke sits there, armored and impatient,  

like a saint who’s tired of being blessed.

He said he once made chocolate from regret—  

dark, expensive, and likely to melt  

before you could name it. He kept a bottle of Burgundy  

for his more philosophical nights,  

when the oven sang arias to the stove  

and the pot pie sighed like a lovesick pilot.

Someone asked about last week’s disaster—  

unrisen wafers, smoke alarms, the smell  

of something that once dreamed of being bread.  

He shrugged. Failure is only lunch in disguise.  

Then he raised his knife like a priest at communion  

and said, the recipe is simple: everything stirs  

until it doesn’t, and then you eat whatever’s left.

What the Fashion Model Said

They told me to embody spring,

so I filled my shoes with tulips.

“Perfect,” they said,  

as my nose began to weep pollen  

and a butterfly fainted on my shoulder.

Once, at a runway in Paris,  

I wore a dress made of frozen yogurt.  

It melted near the applause,  

and men rushed to save me  

moral confusion and spoons.Model Said

I have walked for hurricanes,  

for toothpaste, for the silent scream of linen.  

Once, in Tokyo, I modeled an invisible coat.  

The audience gasped, partly from awe,  

partly because someone had stolen their seats.

At night, I practice smiles in the mirror  

till I forget which one is mine.  

The mirror keeps one—it models me now,  

wandering through reflected jungles,

wearing my teeth like cultured pearls.

What the Ballerina Said

She said the floor remembers everything—  

splinters, sweat, the hours no one clapped for.  

Each scuff is a letter, she said,  

a message from whatever moves us to move.

She twirled once and time took a breath,  

air trembling like glass before rain.  

Even the mirrors bent forward, listening.  

I asked her if grace was borrowed or born.

Neither, she laughed, her shoulders  

winging up like startled birds.  

Grace, she said, is just the disguise of effort—  

the hidden burn under the silk.

When she left, the room folded back into itself.  

Dust drifted down like tired applause.  

Outside, moonlight practiced the same step  

across the snow, again and again.

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.