Poetry By Steve Klepetar

 

Steve Klepetar's work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His seventh chapbook, Return of the Bride of Frankenstein, was recently published by
 Kind of a Hurricane Press 

This feature includes a selection of three poems: 

Walking To Sauk Rapids, Just to Let You Know, I dream of dogs with bared teeth



Walking To Sauk Rapids

Walking to Sauk Rapids is not as easy as it sounds.

Yes, there’s a bridge, sweetly gray and newly built,

but finding it in this endless mist takes patience

and a strong pair of eyes.  Sonar helps – bats careen

above the river, but their silence proves no guide. 

Some dogs will risk a swim, but then your legs

might sink in Mississippi mud, you might tangle

in branches and be swept south, far off course,

and even if you washed up on the shore, river

smells would stick to your shirt.  The town could

be empty then, silent in morning cold, store fronts

bleak, uninviting as old boxes piled in someone’s

garage.  Footsteps echo as you pass the bank, folding

money wet and useless, coyote songs ringing in your ears.

Just To Let You Know

there are unicorns in the meadow

where snowdrops bloom

by the broken door tumbledown shack

by the stone well with three ropes

Wiki Commons PD

 the old barn where ravens pick

at yellow green grass  

unicorns nuzzling fence posts  

stripping bark from birches and pine  

white manes stiff with last night’s rain  

they are silent and wild and unafraid

of dogs with their snarls and chains

or coyotes whose amber eyes gleam

they don’t fear the malice of foxes

or men with beards and coats as red
and black as coal igniting in a stove

or puma slinking through foothills

or black bear slumbering in caves

near waterfalls where the meadow ends

unicorns large shiny as milk trucks 

bigger than fierce black bulls

that stamp and roar their lust into the night

I dream of dogs with bared teeth

prowling in streetlights, yellow

mongrels crouched behind wire

fence.  Overhead floats that cloudy

wafer, the moon.  I lay it on my tongue,

taste its flavor – dusty, potent sweet.

Everything wakes in a daze. 

Every house shivers with ghosts. 

They rise from our coffee, from sleep-caked

eyes we wash silvery bodies, feel them

drain back, useless into earth. 

All day we ride on the roaring engine's back,

drive across bridges blinking, watching

girders flicker as river struggles

downstream, ice-choked.  Over and over

we sing our names.  All day long we murmur

and merge with sky and wind until we return

emptied of words. Weeping, we try to enter

the bodies of birds, those bundles of feather

and soul.  We have left our hunger behind,

outside where our dog tongues burn. 

Every night we disappear, shrieking into the sun.

 ~Steve Klepetar