sfklepetar@icloud.com
Bio Note:
My parents were Holocaust survivors and part of the Jewish refugee community in Shanghai known as the Shanghailanders. I was born there, but emigrated to the U.S. as an infant. I grew up in New York City, where I was lucky to receive a free, elite high school education at Stuyvesant, and a very low cost college education at Harper College (now part of Binghamton University, a New York State school). I received my Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago, and managed to get a job at a tiny school in Wisconsin. I taught there for six years before moving on to The College of Saint Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, and finally landed a tenure track position at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota, where I taught for 31 years. For a Jewish boy from New York, I think I lead the league in saints. I have two sons, both of whom ended up in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. One is a college administrator (it’s the family business; my wife was also a professor at The College of Saint Benedict - Saint John’s University - the saints just keep marching in). Our luck continues to hold, as we have retired near our sons, daughters-in-law, and four granddaughters. I’ve been fortunate as well to publish many poems in Verse-Virtual, One Sentence Poems, and many other places, mostly online. I have two full length poetry collections and seven chapbooks, a life long love of reading, and a small but lovely group of people who love me. I live in a beautiful place, which also happens to be an island of sanity in an increasingly mad country. My life has been blessed, but I worry for my granddaughters as we hurtle toward a future that looks increasingly grim. |
Baggy Pants
My corduroys are too baggy and loose.
When I pull them on, I feel like a clown
who’s forgotten his act, who only wants
a way out of the little car
and into the tunnel leading to the back gate.
At the men’s store they say I’m fashionable.
They sell me overalls
with huge rips in the knee.
I am ashamed and filled with buyer’s remorse,
but my buddies at the pub want to pound
their glasses on the bar.
They sing about trucks and derelict trains.
They wear cowboy boots and rain gear,
which is wise, as the hurricane has come.
Outside the street is a river in full flood
and I don’t trust that picture window
not to break, as trees bend like acrobats
ready to walk away on their calloused palms.
Turn Out the Lights
We line up, two by two in the classroom
with its gray-green industrial paint,
a Periodic Table of the Elements on the wall.
Out the open window in the new spring
we can hear cars on Fifteenth Street
and then two construction workers
joking, trading insults.
Kindly Mrs. Holland seems harassed today,
as if she’s worried about her son,
who might be dropping out of college,
or maybe she’s thinking about an unexpected bill
for a car repair. We’re dawdling a little,
wondering about those guys laughing
or maybe just held in thrall to an early spring day,
so when Mrs. H snaps “Turn out the lights and let’s get going,”
Teddy and I crack up, because the rhythm is so perfect
that many years later, when I try to friend him on Facebook,
he demands to know what Mrs. Holland said that moment so he knows it’s really me.
Palomino
Last night I walked out over the ice.
My hands ached with cold.
Where would I put my face
on a night of silver and bronze?
Where could I place my eyes?
Take me across the river,
bring me to the muddy banks.
Let me find the early crocuses
before they fade, let me stroll
beneath hemlock and oak.
Was I sleeping amidst silent stars?
Once I slipped from a horse’s back.
Nobody saw, but I confess it here.
The mare was named Tempest,
or maybe Sawmill, who can say?
She tossed her palomino head,
snorted in disgust, and trotted for home.
Maintenance
Tonight it was the sink flooding,
last night the bulbs burning out.
Snow piled up by the maple
and sugarbush. The maintenance
is killing me. I spend hours
in the garage searching for oil
and rags. From his garden plot,
my father calls, ‘Have you found
it yet?’ My ears burn with cold.
I insert a bloody finger In my mouth.
We are tool using animals, the three of us.
I have a ladder somewhere, a hammer
and an ax. My brother oils the chainsaw,
my sister holds the toolbox on her knee.
Sometimes we go skating on the ice.
Today the air is bad, ozone
and particulates. We sneeze and wheeze.
Sometimes we sit for hours, staring out
the back door at the snow.
There are winters that never end,
that blow all the way through June.
Our mother calls from her place among
the trees. She whistles as the wind dies
and a cold moon sinks in the gray dawn.