| Missing In Action I left it all on the table, an act not so much of sweeping away Katherine Hepburn style, as shrugging off a backpack filled with books you wouldn’t read even at midnight, waiting in the Gare du Nord. Nothing but dust and halos whispering secrets to the screeching rails. Too thirsty to bleed, I looked in the rain for a streetlamp bar where women stain swollen air with swallow song and every man weeps whisky tears into his rough black beard. Out of sight, goblins sang (if that’s what you would call such squealing rhythms, such a corkscrew in the ears) or maybe they were bats or wingless doves or a million spilled grains of butcher’s salt breathing an atmosphere so rich in oil that every sound converted in the air. Maybe they were rioters downriver, where barges drag new fashions to the crowded outlet mall or maybe they were cats with nothing better to do than open the skin of night with their vestigial teeth. My father owned a green book with photographs of men with vestigial tails. I know this is true though he took that book with him to the grave. Steve Klepetar |
If you have any comments on this poem, Steven Klepetar would be pleased to hear them.
