I drink tea with spiders. There is never
enough milk. The spiders complain about
the heat, but I tell them to blow across
their cups or just have patience and wait.

On sunny days, birds glide overhead, apples
swell and hang heavy from trees. I can say
these truths in three languages,
the words inscribed on the inside of my skull.

This makes travel easier to many parts
of the world. Here’s what I’ve observed:
on rainy days, girls go to the movies.
They don’t go with boys or with their pets,

because they want to hear the film stars
snarl. The stars eat apples dropped from
the beaks of birds. They drink a tea brewed
from webs. They blow across their cups

to calm the howling pets. They have gold
flecked eyes and travel far, speaking tongues
of spice and flame. In darkness the girls spin
on their seats like small tornadoes in a glass jar.

 

—
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems, both from Flutter Press, and Family Reunion, forthcoming from Big Table Publishing.

is filled with lies. He plays with moonlight
as it pools on the bed, twists its fibers

into gold. His name is hidden in the caves
of earth, his fingers filled with mist and grain.

He has taken the queen’s daughter. With his
hand he has opened the door of a thousand lives.

Who has seen them dancing on the tongue
of darkness, swaying to the music of wolves

and frogs? Who has measured those automatic
steps? The sleepwalker sails, a particle through

a slit in the screen. His body stripes the wall
in two parallel lines, but when no one watches,

he streams, a wave rushing wrack and debris
to a black shore sharp with volcanic rock.

His dead eyes open, his tongue tastes the air.
His fingers scribble a code made of stones

and ash. What miracle has he found in the
borderlands but dust, broken houses and trees?

 

—
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems (forthcoming) both from Flutter Press.

We are voices in the wind, scratches
on your windowpane. We live
without light in the heavy leaves of June.

When you wake in the night and your
back aches, or the shrill phone shrieks
and the line goes dead, our faces loom

in long shadows on your bedroom wall.
We are green ice spreading slowly
in your stomach’s pit, the last bill you left

unpaid, the broken lock and the breech
in your brick wall. Together we have played
Ring-Around-Your-Dreams, and tumbled

into dirt. We have balanced you in our hard
and bony arms, sang to you of mice and dancers
dangling from ropes, feet just inches from the floor.

 

—
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems (forthcoming) both from Flutter Press.