January 2016
Steve Klepetar
sfklepetar@stcloudstate.edu
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.)
Return of the Bride of Frankenstein — can be downloaded for free. (Just click on the book title.)
Auld Acquaintance
Old friend, my betrayer, are you well?
You turned fifty-two in May.
Now in October, night winds scatter stars,
new drizzle dances, pocks puddles
on my street. Ghost of cold flickers
at the air’s newly sharp edge.
Everywhere pale yellow leaves,
jaundiced palms nailed to wet trees.
I see your twelve-year old face
between lines of your chuckling email:
Snowboarding in the Rockies,
long car trip and you want to sell the kids.
What do you eat? What pills have they got you on?
Do you look like your father now, that gray little man?
We’re drunk for the first time, New Years Eve,
on cheap rye and ginger, make instant coffee,
spill it out on your mother’s countertops. Sick,
fingers burned, too young, too stupid to live, we shout:
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot?”
“My old pal,” you call me now, a line from those black
and white movies we watched on T.V. Shadows in the alley,
fire escapes, that ancient innocence leaching into bitter snow.
Dali Makes Sense for the Coming Year
Full moon again, ice on my driveway
glistens as if cold were beautiful.
Last night of the year; finally Dali
makes sense. All that rides is on stampede
pounding frozen earth
on spindle legs, shadows stretched
black nylon thin.
Incongruous watches melt across
snow-bent branches. Crucified
lovers turn away from the lady of sorrows.
Swans shimmer on the lake, reflect
into elephants. I could be asleep for all
I know, dreaming I'm a fat butterfly.
Or I could be slavering on all fours
covered with fur. Moonlight stabs my eye
and loins ache, tender in that silver bath.
News
It’s been snowing for three days
and here is the news from Paris
and here’s who won today’s game
and here’s the comet whose tail
is on fire, and the volcano biding
its time. Here comes the night
and the fog and the cold front
moving in. Expect more snow,
expect mist above the frozen
river, and sky to shimmer as your
eyes are burned by a small and
distant sun. Across the road
someone has built an igloo,
blurred but shining in the street
lamps. New neighbors have arrived.
Their Rottweiler whines. They slam
the doors on their pickup truck
and go inside. Lights come on
and the blue flicker of their huge
TV. They settle in to watch the news.
Tomorrow they may all be dead
but tonight the anchor whispers
about the coming of A.I., a network
of minds linked to all knowledge
but without a body and its incumbent
pain, a post-human entity to withstand
the awful news and the dripping clocks
of change through its lifespan of a billion years.
Old friend, my betrayer, are you well?
You turned fifty-two in May.
Now in October, night winds scatter stars,
new drizzle dances, pocks puddles
on my street. Ghost of cold flickers
at the air’s newly sharp edge.
Everywhere pale yellow leaves,
jaundiced palms nailed to wet trees.
I see your twelve-year old face
between lines of your chuckling email:
Snowboarding in the Rockies,
long car trip and you want to sell the kids.
What do you eat? What pills have they got you on?
Do you look like your father now, that gray little man?
We’re drunk for the first time, New Years Eve,
on cheap rye and ginger, make instant coffee,
spill it out on your mother’s countertops. Sick,
fingers burned, too young, too stupid to live, we shout:
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot?”
“My old pal,” you call me now, a line from those black
and white movies we watched on T.V. Shadows in the alley,
fire escapes, that ancient innocence leaching into bitter snow.
Dali Makes Sense for the Coming Year
Full moon again, ice on my driveway
glistens as if cold were beautiful.
Last night of the year; finally Dali
makes sense. All that rides is on stampede
pounding frozen earth
on spindle legs, shadows stretched
black nylon thin.
Incongruous watches melt across
snow-bent branches. Crucified
lovers turn away from the lady of sorrows.
Swans shimmer on the lake, reflect
into elephants. I could be asleep for all
I know, dreaming I'm a fat butterfly.
Or I could be slavering on all fours
covered with fur. Moonlight stabs my eye
and loins ache, tender in that silver bath.
News
It’s been snowing for three days
and here is the news from Paris
and here’s who won today’s game
and here’s the comet whose tail
is on fire, and the volcano biding
its time. Here comes the night
and the fog and the cold front
moving in. Expect more snow,
expect mist above the frozen
river, and sky to shimmer as your
eyes are burned by a small and
distant sun. Across the road
someone has built an igloo,
blurred but shining in the street
lamps. New neighbors have arrived.
Their Rottweiler whines. They slam
the doors on their pickup truck
and go inside. Lights come on
and the blue flicker of their huge
TV. They settle in to watch the news.
Tomorrow they may all be dead
but tonight the anchor whispers
about the coming of A.I., a network
of minds linked to all knowledge
but without a body and its incumbent
pain, a post-human entity to withstand
the awful news and the dripping clocks
of change through its lifespan of a billion years.
©2016 Steve Klepetar