April 2016
Steve Klepetar
sfklepetar@stcloudstate.edu
I'm a retired college professor (Literature and Creative Writing), who was born in Shanghai, China in 1949. My parents were Holocaust survivors and refugees. I grew up in New York City, earned my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and spent my teaching career in the Midwest — Wisconsin for six years, and then Minnesota. My work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize, including three in 2015. I've published a book and seven chapbooks, two of which — Blue Season and 
Return of the Bride of Frankenstein — can be downloaded for free.  (Just click on the book title.)


Submission Guidelines


Chain your poems to an iron chair
and beat them with a rubber hose
until they confess, then send them
our way.  We’ll salve their wounds
and give them some useful work to do.
Send up to five poems (or as many 
as fit on the back of a hummingbird’s
wing). Be sure to include a brief bio – 
fifty words will do – telling us about 
the state of your soul, or if you don’t
 have one, provide a list of your piercings 
and tattoos.  A photo would be nice, 
your face in the throes of passion 
or an action shot (we like backflips, 
cartwheels, pole vaulting – anything 
athletic will work, but no team sports, 
please – we’re individualists).  We like 
edgy, poems that foam at the mouth, work 
unafraid to dig its way to China, verse 
that brings down empires but tastes like cherry pie.

First published in Snakeskin.


Three Family Poems
Author's Note: Here are a few photos of my mom. The second one is with one of her grandsons and great-granddaughter, the third is her and a great-granddaughter, and the fourth is at the movies with two other great-granddaughters.

Family Reunion


Here I am in an old coat and the stupid 
hat I bought at a tourist shop in Vermont

and haven’t worn for years. 
What I’m doing here, I have no idea, 

but it’s raining and the sun is going down. 
I’ve lost my map. My car keys dangle 

in my hand, but it’s hard to see beyond
the blur of traffic lights out into the storm.

My father walks by the roadside
on all fours like a gray cat. I slow down 

to offer him a ride but he waves me on 
as if  he knew how likely I was to get lost.

I pull back onto the street, carefully so I 
won’t soak him with my spray. In the mirror 

I see his green eyes fading far behind. 
His brother has become an owl, a mouse 

dangling from the curve of his claws. 
“Uncle,” I say, with the exaggerated 

politeness he doesn’t deserve. He flies 
headlong into my grill, feathers splayed 

behind him in a gesture futile and defiant 
as the furious face of his emaciated wife.





What You Named Me


You tell me your parents took your real name,
buried it away. They buried your sister’s name
in the same grave where you buried mine,
but I clawed and crawled my way out through
heavy, wet dirt. Call me Roosevelt, if you like,
or call me for the tiger-striped cat who howled
beneath your window in the dark. Call me your
lover’s name if you think that could bring him
back, or my father’s name, that man who would
never lift his feet. You didn’t  like my American 
name, so try my German name, my Czech name 
or the name my buddies nailed to my shadow 
as I slid through wax-scented, slippery halls 
of all those schools, shreds of my birth certificate
dangling from my shoulders, an immigrant’s
torn coat waiting in the tailor’s shop to be repaired.





My Mother Crosses Queens Boulevard


Some call it “The Boulevard of Death,” which, I is why, 
I guess, some cop gives my eighty-five year old mother 
a j-walking summons when she couldn’t make it 
all the way across on one green light. 
She waits on the little concrete island until traffic 
clears, then scuttles across on red. Cop calls her over, 
hands her the summons. Not a ticket, mind you; 
she has to appear in Queens County Court 
to face misdemeanor charges, shows up expecting 
a long day and a big fine, arrives on the dot of nine, 
surrounded by big men in orange jumpsuits. 
One guy shuffles in shackled hand and foot, 
watched by a Sheriff’s deputy with a shotgun 
slung across his left arm. She’s the first one called: 
“Eva Klep-ter?” “Kle-pe-tar,” she corrects, approaching 
the bench. Judge looks at her. Looks at the cop. 
Back at her. At the cop again. 
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“B..But your honor, I…”
“Jeez. Get the fuck out of my courtroom, you moron.”
Cop slinks out, a dog that’s been smacked 
on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. 
“Sorry for the language, ma’am. On behalf of Queens 
County and the City of New York I want to apologize 
for you getting dragged down here.”
He writes on a yellow legal pad, stamps it with a seal. 
“Next time, Mrs. Klep-ter, show this to the officer. 
Goodbye, and please, be careful crossing the street. NEXT!”
©2016 Steve Klepetar