March 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.)
The Woman Who Returned
Someone divides a hill and a woman climbs out,
shaking the dust from her hair.
Leaping into the river, she chants a song
as she swims against wind and tide.
Her breath is fog and spills onto the banks
and reeds. Nobody knows her name
or the shape of her lips.
For years she has studied the habits of birds.
Her eyes are arrows, they have wings
and can sail the air for three hundred miles,
whispering the target’s secret name.
Now she bleeds in the yard.
She has fashioned a house out of snow.
She feeds chickadees with suet and seed.
She has torn a hole in the sky.
Tomorrow she will rename the day, bringing flowers
to women who mourn. She will mend the smoke
and stir up soup so that everyone can eat.
Tonight she stands in water up to her thighs.
She has caught a fish that struggles at the end of her line,
bellowing in a language of beetles and bullfrogs and crows.
Prodigal Son
How far can you get from Highway 8
with its thick woods and snowfields, ragged
fences blown down and tangled in shallow
culverts as you race west toward a more
substantial sun?
And now what pulls you home?
Pine trees shiver in January wind,
the driving tricky and slow as you pass
Resurrection Lake, frozen into glassy bumps,
its surface dotted with ice fishing shacks
and pickup trucks. Horses stamp in a field,
their breath rising
as smoke signals for a distant eye.
You’ve never loved it here, where air
stings and jays screech their protests
in the failing light.
What ship touched you down
in a strange port, two thousand miles
from here, fingers rope-torn,
beard filled with fish blood and foam?
Someday you’ll return to find the village
burned, churches, bars, and houses
transformed into such surprising piles of ash,
small and swirling in a cold, bare place
where the river bends
to form a small lake, silent and insignificant as dust.
Returning to Flesh
Here’s comfort for the sorrowing
ghost whose mind returns to flesh,
who recalls the scent of grass
and grills, and whose empty form
is hurt by the beauty of dust dancing
in light beams, waterwheels milling
grain in a city by a river far from
the sea, by cornflowers and cold air
and traffic piling up at stoplights
when work lets out. Here’s comfort
for the caverns of his eyes, for whorls
on his fingertips, for his hair, forever
dry and rustling like leaves stirred
by wind in a bare place. The body
unfolds: a process, a bundle of selves
hurtling through time like starlight
from long ago, when sky possessed
a different face and his blood had not
been culled from the deep, called forth
to spill upon the rocky face of earth.
Someone divides a hill and a woman climbs out,
shaking the dust from her hair.
Leaping into the river, she chants a song
as she swims against wind and tide.
Her breath is fog and spills onto the banks
and reeds. Nobody knows her name
or the shape of her lips.
For years she has studied the habits of birds.
Her eyes are arrows, they have wings
and can sail the air for three hundred miles,
whispering the target’s secret name.
Now she bleeds in the yard.
She has fashioned a house out of snow.
She feeds chickadees with suet and seed.
She has torn a hole in the sky.
Tomorrow she will rename the day, bringing flowers
to women who mourn. She will mend the smoke
and stir up soup so that everyone can eat.
Tonight she stands in water up to her thighs.
She has caught a fish that struggles at the end of her line,
bellowing in a language of beetles and bullfrogs and crows.
Prodigal Son
How far can you get from Highway 8
with its thick woods and snowfields, ragged
fences blown down and tangled in shallow
culverts as you race west toward a more
substantial sun?
And now what pulls you home?
Pine trees shiver in January wind,
the driving tricky and slow as you pass
Resurrection Lake, frozen into glassy bumps,
its surface dotted with ice fishing shacks
and pickup trucks. Horses stamp in a field,
their breath rising
as smoke signals for a distant eye.
You’ve never loved it here, where air
stings and jays screech their protests
in the failing light.
What ship touched you down
in a strange port, two thousand miles
from here, fingers rope-torn,
beard filled with fish blood and foam?
Someday you’ll return to find the village
burned, churches, bars, and houses
transformed into such surprising piles of ash,
small and swirling in a cold, bare place
where the river bends
to form a small lake, silent and insignificant as dust.
Returning to Flesh
Here’s comfort for the sorrowing
ghost whose mind returns to flesh,
who recalls the scent of grass
and grills, and whose empty form
is hurt by the beauty of dust dancing
in light beams, waterwheels milling
grain in a city by a river far from
the sea, by cornflowers and cold air
and traffic piling up at stoplights
when work lets out. Here’s comfort
for the caverns of his eyes, for whorls
on his fingertips, for his hair, forever
dry and rustling like leaves stirred
by wind in a bare place. The body
unfolds: a process, a bundle of selves
hurtling through time like starlight
from long ago, when sky possessed
a different face and his blood had not
been culled from the deep, called forth
to spill upon the rocky face of earth.
©2016 Steve Klepetar