Two Poems by Steve Klepetar

Still life with Smoke

You can smell it on the ripening

fruit, peaches

and bananas and dark plums

glinting in harsh

light of a bare bulb. Perhaps rising

from a cigarette

consuming itself on the savage lip

of an ashtray’s ironic smile.

And whose hand is that, resting

on the rust-red table, more

weary than starved, half eaten

by thick, acidic air? Who has

offered this feast of floodlights

and chains? What defeated

mouth helplessly surges towards flesh?

When Fire Comes

When planets align and winter beaches groan

with surge, who will lead you home? What skies

will welcome you, traveller battered by roads

unsheltered and unadorned? Tattoos mark

your shoulders and your neck – a chariot,

a sword and a horse with feathered wings –

but now you know you have been away too long.

Distance hasn’t rescued you, nor has all

you’ve seen survived the instant of a dream.

Lost in this wild wind, your ears have lost

the thread of human speech. Cold gravel clogs

your lips and tongue. This frigid night your skin

glows radiation green, and even open doors

won’t stand long against a massive blaze.

When fire comes, where will you find a space?

Even angels feel this kind of heat. Impassive

eyes, so beautiful and blue, discern

such shimmering waves as lift surrounding air

to tumbling clouds of rage and eyeless storm.

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. Flutter Press has recently published his latest chapbook "My Father Teaches Me a Magic Word,]."