Steve Klepetar- Three Poems

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared worldwide, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Expound, The Muse: India, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Voices Israel, Ygdrasil, and many others.  Several of his poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (including three in 2015). Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and  The Li Bo Poems, both from Flutter Press.

Every Blade of Grass

Here’s a rebellion starting, a circle

of angry men. They toe the ground

like horses gathered in a cold field,

stamp their boots on crusted snow.

All night their dreams are plagued

by darting crows. Mice scrabble

in the cellar, a dog moans outside

a cottage made of stone. A song

rises from someone’s phone,

a lament about a brother dead, two

women with their black hair hanging

in a curtain of grief. Men wake

to moonlight and a clatter of plates:

wives and girlfriends cooking, serving

food. One man says “there’s a rifle

behind every blade of grass.”

Another pulls his fleece tight around

his chest and coughs, air heavy

with dust. A pickup bounces along

the access road. With sunrise, sky

will fill with smoke, as a hundred

curses snake all around stiffening tongues

Stillborn

Again I wake in the cold night to find

my heart in flame. It’s four a.m., but still

the postman’s knock comes loud as breaking

glass. Who could have sanctified this early

shift, or has the mailman at my door gone

rogue? Rubbing my eyes, I shuffle to open,

alert for murderers or thieves, but there is

nothing, just a package addressed to my

other self, the one who clings to edges of dream.

With fingertip, I trace his name and feel

the sting along my calves, the burning

in my lungs, as if I had run six miles

in summer heat. When will I enter his

life of silver birch and rain? Darkness

wavers now, trembling at the edge of sky.

Somewhere in the distance I hear a train.

Its roar and whistle linger on the quiet lake

until they vanish in the silence of a stillborn day.

In the Garden of New Growth

Here in the garden of new growth

last year’s weeds lie like exhausted

nudes weary from stretching their

limbs on a wiry couch. A dog sniffs

at thawing earth, pricks his ears

and bays into the wind. Neighbors

carry armloads of wood to their shed.

A man across the street is dying,

less substantial every day since he

cursed a couple waiting by the hydrant

to pick up their kids from school.

His eyes have twisted in their sockets

as if to begin the self-examination

we all must make one day. His wife

makes soup from bones. All day

the water boils and boils, and she

scoops frothing scum from the top,

adding onions and carrots and peas,

the neighborhood fragrant with

the scent of her cooking, windows

open in warm spring air. Maybe

his soul will rise in the steam of her

magical broth as her brothers arrive

from out of state, tired and hungry

from a three day’s drive, to help her pack.