STEVE KLEPETAR
★ ★ ★ ★
POETRY
Sunday Morning, Twenty-Five Below
What is it like, forever, in this bright disc
of sun low in winter sky, just above the river
on a morning of deathly cold? Snow
crackles underfoot and even air seems
brittle, as if you could break off a blue
chunk and feel its point and sharp edge
as your fingers move along the blade.
For all the screeching news, this is an
empty land. Between the seas, mountains
break from the earth’s hard crust,
and there are pathways down into silent
realms. It’s even stranger here,
with houses breathing and frozen,
empty yards. Morning envelops me;
I enter its strange embrace, going deeper
and deeper inside myself. There is a heart
and blood, and a room I recognize
from long ago. I stood here once,
the windows aflame with light, emptiness
spilling from the walls in a torrent of shadowy rain.
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared in nine countries, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Antiphon, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, including four in 2016. His latest collections are A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press) and Family Reunion (Big Table Publishing).
That kind of cold does create the kind of isolation you show here, where you are circumscribed by a still and frozen world that turns you inward and down, toward your own vital warmth, your own deep silences. You nail it here!
I had to put on a sweater to read this a second time.