October 2018
Steve Klepetar
sfklepetar@stcloudstate.edu
Note: If dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, jokes must be the back alley. My father told one about a young man who was too shy to talk to women. His friend pulled him aside and said “Look, it’s easy to talk to women. Start with food, then family, then maybe a little philosophy.” The young man went on a date and to break the ice he asked the woman if she liked fish. “No,” she said, “not really.” After a short pause, he said “Do you have a brother?” “No” came the reply. The young man thought for a moment. Then he said “Well, if you had a brother, would he like fish?”
 
My mother said, “What happened then?” My father looked at her and sighed. “Then they got married,” he said, “and had two very stupid children.” 

Eating Bean Soup with The Mick
 

First, fragrant steam rises from bowls,
notes of cilantro, garlic, cumin, mace.
Then hot beans, a slight jolt of pain
on the tongue resolving into satisfaction.
Mantle, back from the dead, takes a long
swig of the beer we’re drinking, a local IPA,
dark brown, with a neat little head.
He’s a bit thick for a ghost,
but still The Mick, The Commerce Comet.
“You know,” he tells me, “I walked
over seventeen hundred times in my career,
and I struck out that many too.
Think about that.
More than thirty-four hundred plate appearances
without hitting a fair ball.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
I dish out another bowl. We dip our bread,
clink our bottles. He sighs, grins, shakes his head.
“Like six years without once putting the fucking ball in play.”



 
A Poetry Reading in Hell


A famous poet with a long beard and crusty eyes
reads from pages that smolder and burn.
He is very drunk and stumbles over every
second word. Your leg has fallen asleep.
The room is crowded, but he picks you out,
calls you a friend he has never met
and dedicates a poem to you about four men
who row to the middle of a lake, where each
writes a verse beginning with his mother’s name.
Spittle forms around his yellow teeth.
Outside, a cold rain beats against the sidewalk
and the street. The windows rattle, but his voice,
like a bag of sand dragged across a concrete floor,
penetrates the air. He peers over his glasses
directly at your face, jabbing his index finger as if to say
“You are complicit in all these words. I name you as my heir.”



 
This Poem is not a Ponzi Scheme


I won’t ask you to send a dollar to read this poem.
This poem is not a radio. You won’t be able to tune it in.
From this poem you will get no news
and the only songs it plays are ones I want to hear
on rainy days in a cold spring.
This poem does not speak in your mother’s voice.
It is not a fit companion for a long hike
on the Appalachian Trail.
I wouldn’t bring it in a canoe or a raft
or a cruise ship bound for Mexico.
This poem is not a hurricane.
It will not bring a tree down on your roof
or send the river racing through your yard.
This is not a poem, but a map of the world laid out in code.
It is quieter than beans growing on the side of a garage,
barely a ripple in the pond, where at dusk frogs sing to the fading light.
​© 2018 Steve Klepetar
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