Winter 07

This is what I came from, a tribe of men
who couldn’t find their way. For years
we wandered among this maze of stars,
every startling cry burning in our midnight
ears. We stepped on our own tails, raked
our naked heads against branches and sharp
brush. In the dark we bumped each other
and cursed and sighed and wished for
those cunning lamps we had left behind.
Sometimes we tried to climb ladders
of rain, our electric bodies sparking in mist,
or followed a twisting river as it tore
down into a canyon’s wide, red
mouth, believing we would be swallowed
by earth and lost forever in her secret
caverns and ravines. In collective delirium
we marked her walls with palm prints
and fire and gleaming gashes made by tongues.


	Confession By Steve Klepetar

	This is what I came from, a tribe of men who couldn’t find their way. For years we wandered among this maze of stars, every startling cry burning in our midnight ears. We stepped on our own tails, raked our naked heads against branches and sharp brush. In the dark we bumped each other and cursed and sighed and wished for those cunning lamps we had left behind. Sometimes we tried to climb ladders of rain, our electric bodies sparking in mist, or followed a twisting river as it tore down into a canyon’s wide, red mouth, believing we would be swallowed by earth and lost forever in her secret caverns and ravines. In collective delirium we marked her walls with palm prints and fire and gleaming gashes made by tongues.

	Despite having taught literature and writing at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota for the past twenty three years, Steve Klepetar's New York accent remains as thick as peanut butter penuche. Klepetar, whose poetry has appeared in a number of journals like Lily, Mad Hatter's Review, Whiteleaf, Apple Valley Review and others, claims to be the best known Shanghai-born-Jewish-American poet in all of Central Minnesota.