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.