October 1, 2014

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

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