Posted on: May 1, 2013
Midnight Walks
Pink elephants glitter through a memory
of a garden. Soaked in rain,
we dance so carefully. Echoing
each other’s indifference
regarding vision, we pattern a moon.
Dialed for futility,
invisible hands reached through
ghosts (broth present and unaccounted for).
Laughter lightening tongues
toward tales of fear and following. Our hands
folding inside each other as we cross
a bridge no one built to come out. Unscathed
is a fairy-told demon. We find
only slightly scarred is more reality’s toll.
Electric Sunset
Flock of feathered followers
pierce the clouds. Dollops of fuscia,
gold, and lime sizzle before igniting. Clouds
crack, open a peep show of silver linings.
Lighting spotlights the mountains’ misery.
1… 2… 3… Thunder matches angry
growl of night, resigns, fades from dripping red
to black.…
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Posted on: May 1, 2013
The Lost Place
No longer home
or any other world,
this empty space
grows inside out
like time eating
its own flicking tail.
Have you wondered
where the strong
walls bent, sliding
back into earth?
Who has answered
your call or left
a message on your
empty, hanging pad?
Someday you may
call me “brother”
or forget my different
name. Someday
you too may disappear
another breath of smoke
an absence rising
wraith-like to the snowy stars.
Copyright©2013 by Steve Klepetar. All Rights Reserved.
Steve Klepetar teaches literature and creative writing at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent chapbooks include My Father Teaches Me a Magic Word and My Father Had Another Eye, both from Flutter Press. His book Speaking to the Field Mice was recently published by Sweatshoppe Publications.…
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Posted on: April 1, 2013
Prayer
Little lake
earth’s thimble
glacial sink
take my ache
take the torn girl
the grieved woman
buoy her children
there where
the loon
calculates
its catch
where the
pickerel jumps
and the pocked
surface splits
or reflects
Black Mountain
I can’t contain
all I’ve got
to carry let me
leave it to your
silt muck reeds
and granite
to your white
lilies and their
leeches to the
streams that
feed you deep
pond stay
close today
I’m counting
on your volume
your powers
to dilute to be
your gracious
self to ask no
questions pond
absorb receive
ripple then that
lovely silence
will you take
a few of these
troubles pond
and positively
drown them?
Telling
That’s when blindness set
in. Silent movie. I knew
all those door hinges, their
capacity for swivel. Ceded
my sight to the cornice’s
stare. Do you know yourself
a vision veiled? What
the throat felt: need
clamping (his) / a forced
yield. It’s a marvel,
scientifically speaking;
it will succumb
unhingingly. Whatever
wriggling resistance
I came with has been
quashed. The light
changed, a strange cloudy.…
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