Mike Smetzer: Poetry, Fiction, Essays, Whatnots & Whimsies

Upside Down

Michael Smetzer — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:32:05 +0000

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Upside down beside the walk,

a doped squirrel hung on a tree,

a tag on his ear, a twitch in his nose,

and a sad little look for me.

“Squirrel,” I said, “You’re dull as lead.

What can your trouble be?”

But well I knew the drugs they brew

for modern zoology.

To hang in the air as dull as a bear

asleep in a sewer drain.

To stare at a man who is reaching a hand

to staple a tag by your brain.

To twitch like a sprout that is twisting about

under a new-paved lane.

To look down at me here under your tree

and not even know to complain.

(first published in Mostly Maine)

A Children’s Tale

Michael Smetzer — Thu, 27 May 2010 08:31:38 +0000

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Once, very long ago, a wonderful boy lived with his family in the dunes along Great Lake. Jack, for that was his name, was a dutiful son. From the first light until almost dark, he would be out in the dunes gathering food for his parents. He would wade into the lake to net little fishes. He would hunt through the saw grass for the eggs of birds. He would gather wild rice along the marsh. And in the spring he would dig sassafras near the tops of the highest dunes to make his parents tea.

Jack had to work hard, but he loved his parents and so he was happy. And his parents loved him, for he was their favorite child. Although their other children were good, the parents sometimes sighed because none was as wonderful as Jack. But they told each other, “Soon he will marry and then we will have grandchildren just as wonderful as he.”

Then one day it happened that Jack’s father saw his own death nearby, watching. He called the family together around the little fire in their hut. “Children,” he said, “when I was young my father placed a treasure in my hands. Our family has owned our treasure since before these sands around us were solid rock. All these years I have kept this treasure in darkness. Now I will bring it back to light.”

So saying, the old man opened a secret pocket and emptied a little sack into his palm. All the children, the wife, and even the old man himself sat there amazed, for out of the little sack spilled a sand of tiny gems, each sparkling with firelight. The gems filled them all with delight and awe and pride. “Jack,” the old man said, “my death has arrived. You are the most wonderful of sons, and it is to you I give our treasure. Keep our family’s secret until you too grow old.”

* * *

This happened when the blackberries were ripe. When the sumac leaves turned red, the old man kept to his hut, and before the hickory trees were bare, he died. They buried him at the landward edge of a dune so that time would raise a mound above his head. Now Jack made a pocket to hide his father’s sack. All winter he carried the gems, and in the spring he went to seek a wonderful wife.

Jack wandered among the families along the lake, but he could find no girl as wonderful as he. So one day Jack built a boat to cross the wide slough that separated the new dunes beside the lake from an ancient line of forested dunes, old shore watchers from a time when Great Lake was even larger. As he walked among the oaks, he saw a young woman beside a spring. She told him she had wandered far in the woods seeking mushrooms and fresh greens for her parents and the bulbs of spring beauties, which her mother loved. And she had been so happy gathering for her parents that she had lost her way. Then she had come to this spring, but she knew the forest around them was magical and now she was afraid to drink. To Jack she seemed the most wonderful woman he had ever met.

Smiling bravely, he knelt down and drank deeply, then sat down beside her on a log to rest. Suddenly his legs jerked straight out, and his lower body swelled up so tight the pain made him howl. The woman placed her sweater under his head and ran off into the forest calling for help.

At this point an old man dressed like a healer appeared and asked Jack what was wrong. Jack pointed to the spring and pleaded for his help. “I can help you,” he said, “but you must swear a solemn oath to do everything I ask.” Jack swore an oath on his father’s grave. The man took water from his gourd and some herbs from near the spring and whipped them into a froth. He rubbed this on Jack’s stomach and legs until they calmed.

“What do you have in this pocket?” the old man asked.

“It is my family treasure,” Jack replied.

“Let me see it. You have sworn on your father’s grave.”

Jack was horrified but he dared not break his oath, so he lay still as the old man drew the sack from its pocket and spilled the gems into his hand. In the daylight, even under the trees, the gems were too brilliant for Jack to look on, but he saw the old man’s wonder, then the greed in his eyes.

“I will take these for my service,” he said, and with one gulp he swallowed them all. Before Jack could cry out, the old man and the spring vanished.

* * *

Through summer and fall Jack’s family searched the old dunes, but no trace of the old man did they find, nor anyone who knew him. All winter and all spring Jack’s family mourned. Then, when blackberries came ripe, Jack returned alone to the old dunes. When he wandered to the place where the spring had been, he found the old man trapped in a fairy ring. In those days woodland fairies would sometimes circle a sleeper, and where they stepped mushrooms would push up their earthy heads. When the sleeper arose he could not cross their circle nor could the mushrooms be touched or the ring broken except with a fresh‑cut stick of poison oak.

“Where are my gems?” Jack demanded.

“Still in my stomach,” the old man replied. “But if you will cut a stick of poison oak and free me from this ring, I will return them to you.”

Jack cut the poison oak and took it in his hand. He walked back to the ring. “Do you swear you will return my gems if I free you?”

“I swear,” the old man answered.

When Jack broke the ring with his stick, the man hopped quickly out.

“And now return my gems,” said Jack.

The old man bent over and vomited black and green upon the ground and then again he was gone. Jack scooped the vomit into his hat and carried it home. Between the stench of the vomit and the swelling of his hands, it was the hardest trip Jack had ever made, but he was full of hope.

On the shore of the lake Jack washed the vomit in a basin. At the bottom he found a mass of gems, his family’s gems but all lackluster and black. Never again would they sparkle with colors in the firelight. Jack hid the gems in the sack and kept them as his duty in his pocket. The next spring he went again into the old dunes and found the wonderful young woman he had met by the spring. He told her his story and she married him for his honesty and his shame. Together, in their simple way, they prospered and together they were happy and only sometimes a little sad. The gems have passed through Jack’s descendants to this day, but no child since has ever seemed as wonderful as Jack.

(first published in My Legacy)

A Man Who Told the Truth: 5 Poems

Michael Smetzer — Tue, 25 May 2010 09:33:46 +0000

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A Quiet Man

What I ate for supper turned my urine orange.

If I were a braggart:

I could startle old men in courthouse johns.

I could tell weeping women I had given them

disease.

Believers could come to me to bathe and be

healed.

But I am a quiet man.

I will piss in pop bottles to leave on the steps

for your children.

(first published in Cottonwood Review’s Open House)

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The New Arrival

A green flag in his pocket.

A breath mint in his mouth.

Standing like a new rake

beside the garden display.

He might have descended from

a Polish miller or a Roman Caesar

who straddled Gaul with his legions.

But he is a pair of J.C. Penney loafers,

slacks by K-Mart.

The courthouse has burned down on his past.

Good-bye to a great grandmother,

who may or may not have had

a mole on her neck like his.

The old gray chest in the U-Haul

is only full of jeans.

No shards of pottery.

No arthritic bones.

(first published in Hanging Loose)

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My Last Race

I reached the finish before the others,

but my wife was not looking,

my son was in the john.

Suddenly the stretched line

was my only dimension,

and I moved along that line

like a bead along a string.

Runners broke through

like sparks across a tunnel

I could never leave.

(first published in Cottonwood Review)

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You Tell Me You Love a Wife Beater

Divorced Three Times

The sabre still rises through the air

in the memory of his third wife

as he chases her from their house

and two blocks down the street.

There he collapsed and you found him,

crying and impotent,

a little boy with a thin wet beard.

So you took him home.

You hung his sabre above the sofa.

You rocked and sang him to sleep.

But he has grown stronger

and he no longer cries and pleads.

He pushes you out of your bed.

Shouts summon you in the night.

One day you return to find

the sabre vanished from the wall.

Out back you see him practice

on the saplings in your yard.

Once a woman who had lost her child

found a baby wolf and brought it home.

She didn’t think of pain

until the teeth began to nurse.

(first published in Kansas Quarterly)

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A Man Who Told the Truth

A man who told the truth

wouldn’t say much.

He’d sit all day and watch his life.

Sometimes he’d pick up a stick

and break it.

Maybe he would sit on a log

and watch the oaks

or on a park bench in some quiet town.

He might walk around some city

stepping over cracks.

It wouldn’t really matter.

If he were to tell the truth

what could he say?

That spring leaves are green

and winter leaves are brown?

That children run in circles

while old men walk straight lines?

That cities are full of cracks?

(first published in Wind)

Hungry Love: 6 Poems

Michael Smetzer — Sun, 23 May 2010 09:21:18 +0000

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Bill Acres Explains His Life

You have to be drunk or happy.

If you‘re not you don’t see those early summer leaves.

You don’t feel that off-white warmth of concrete in the sun.

You don’t see nothing when you’re down.

You just see your own dirty toes.

You don’t see that loose Kansas dirt.

You don’t see those concrete slabs lined out like

fallen dominoes

all the way to the park.

Hey! Those black and white bird droppings are

a clue to life.

They say you look up you’ll see what’s coming down.

But it won’t kill you.

You got to wipe it off and laugh.

(first published in Cottonwood Review)

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Tequila / Pulque

Agave worm in the bottle,

you’re crema de la worm.

Ebony knob on a divinity stick.

Who could swallow a prettier fellow?

But what have you to do with Tequila?

With wormy agave drained to death

by sweaty men in a desert?

With its juice brewed for pulque,

distilled for bandits to heat themselves

before stopping the bus from the border?

Hey, perfect worm, you look

gringo clean tonight!

Give me a glass of pulque,

where a real worm might be,

mottled and smashed, cut to bits –

a worm of the people.

Pass him round in a bottle

born of broken bottles.

¡Salud! to the approaching lights –

el autobús de las turistas.

(first published in Cottonwood)

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Hungry Love

I see you

eating

twice cooked

duck.

Your fingers

buckle

its skin.

Your

tongue

curls

way

the thin,

dark

flesh,

returns

to the pile

on the tray,

to kiss

the juices,

giving

each

fragile

bone

its gentle,

final

suck.

My hungry love.

(first published in George & Mertie’s Place)

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The Wait

Days draw out like hot glass

without end.

Time waits action

and night birds cry no peace.

I trickle around buildings

wincing before the light,

or, shadow in the night,

I haunt dark streets

beneath the moon-clock sky.

Organic time salamanders

over the earth in me,

while eyes flick out

against dead buildings

and all about

stupid traffic lights blink

incomprehension.

(first published in Cottonwood Review)

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Animals Hunting

In the supermarket animals are hunting

for eggs.

They are digging out potatoes

and fondling ripe melons.

Young pairs graze together down aisles.

An old female is poking the buns

while young hunters bring in peaches

and pile them in bins.

Animals carry food to the counter.

After sniffing and other rituals, they pass

and hurry to dens with broccoli

and beef hearts.

(first published in Kansas Quarterly)

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Wasp

I saw a wasp on the window glass today –

a cold, wet, uncomfortable day.

The wasp hung unmoving in the cold,

waiting for the sun to heat its blood.

Snappy yellow legs, its body striped with black,

glass-drawn and fresh but silent as an empty circus.

It did at times begin to clean itself,

look active, come to life.

Yet it did not fly.

Again it spread its legs upon the glass.

(first published in Cottonwood Review)

Winter in Old Town, Maine: 2 Poems

Michael Smetzer — Fri, 21 May 2010 09:58:41 +0000

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Sunday Morning, January 1

Outside the drizzle finds oak rags

solemn on their limbs,

and sets against the radio hymns

its own rough-measured drops.

The toaster pops its little plume

that lingers as I drip and stop

the honey spout, sweet almost-lips

I circle with my finger.

(first published in Mostly Maine)

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Spring Comes to Old Town, Maine

The March rain is colder growing,

snow will fall on ice tonight.

Summer thoughts are huddled low in

nests of lint with summer’s mice.

Who will sing cuccu, cuccu?

Old panes cackle, house beams buckle,

melt waters freeze below the spouts.

Snow squalls dance with bones of maple

as this gray equinox blacks out.

And no one sings cuccu, cuccu.

(first published in Mostly Maine)

Waiting Among the Dead

Michael Smetzer — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:37:06 +0000

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Every morning dead crawdads are piled by my door,

like nestlings dropped from a tree.

I shovel them into bags and carry them out back.

For every day a new bag lining my alley.

They stink through the fly-covered plastic.

My neighbor Allen says eat them fresh.

He comes and sits on my steps.

Lines of ants search the bleached grass.

Allen scratches dead skin off his legs,

and we watch ants carry this away.

All day the sun on cracked clay and hot steps.

A dripping hose has drawn four-inch slugs.

They lie around in the morning like dead moths.

Allen says they are shell-less snails. Serve them French.

The summer sun shines all day and on into the night.

I walk the streets and feel the sweat blossom

into mushrooms above the band of my cap.

I don’t shave or bathe, and whatever I drink

tastes of instant coffee.

When I piss it is dark yellow and stains the leaves.

Where I piss daily earth worms gather –

pink and fishy white.

I wear no sandals and won’t wash my feet.

As I lie in bed I can feel small insects moving

between my toes.

Skunks gather at my door to eat crawdads.

In the morning the skunks are dead.

I shovel their corpses into bags.

Allen will not accept my bags.

They are overflowing my alley.

All day I do nothing but wait for rain.

My nose bleeds and my tongue is cloth.

I follow a crow to the graveyard where he calls

from Allen’s stone.

The grass around his grave is rich with green.

At night a crawdad peeks out of his hole,

Allen’s eyes shine like rubies.

(first published in Tellus)

Men in Boxes: 4 Poetic Parables

Michael Smetzer — Mon, 17 May 2010 09:58:36 +0000

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A Naked Man

A naked man is standing in my yard.

He is staring in my window trying

to see my clothes.

When I pass the window I must crawl

below the sill.

He will not go away.

When I call the police, no one answers.

Yesterday he saw me dressed for work.

My dress shirt and tie were exposed.

His gaze ravaged my slacks.

That night he saw my T-shirt and jeans.

I am afraid to take out my laundry.

In the morning I will not raise

the blinds

until I take off my clothes.

(first published in Poetry Now)

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The Wart

When you wake up in the morning,

your nose itches.

When you look in the mirror,

you see a wart.

Everywhere you go people glance quickly

and look sick.

You try to hide it with your hand,

but every time you touch it

it grows.

So you go to the doctor and he cuts

it off.

In a week it has grown back,

larger.

You wear a band-aid over your nose.

People look at you like a sewer.

Your lover could not stand the band-aid

and has left town.

The note saying good-bye is written

to your wart.

No one can remember your name.

You are “the man with the wart,” “the wart man,”

or simply “the wart.”

Pranksters leave fresh lemons on your door.

Nothing you try takes it off.

The wart covers all your nose.

Women scream.

Children call you “monster.”

You only go out at night.

It spreads around your eyes.

It has broken up into many scaly lumps.

A plastic surgeon cuts away your face,

but the roots have reached into your brain.

Warts come up along the edges of the plastic.

They are filling in your ears.

A preacher tells you to pray.

You take his hands and are born again

to Jesus.

The next day his hands sprout warts.

He does not return.

One morning you are blind.

Warts are growing on your eyes.

You can no longer hear,

so you lie in bed and dream.

In your dream you are a handsome knight.

A princess kisses you are her lips

burst out in warts.

You kiss her and all your warts pass

onto her body.

When you wake up you are well.

Only dry husks are scattered in your bed.

You are weak but joyful.

At noon your lover returns

covered with warts.

She has come back to embrace you.

(first published in Cottonwood Review)

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A Man With Boxes

In an old box a man is writing your name

with a crayon.

He will put his old shoes in the box

and close the lid.

At supper your food will taste of sweat

and leather.

At night you will be afraid of the dark,

and by day you will gasp for air.

You will walk in your sleep

and wake to find yourself in a strange city.

You will remember things someone else forgot,

and your thoughts will come like postcards

in an unknown tongue.

One hot day a man will stop you.

His smell will be warm and close.

You will melt into his box.

Somewhere outside a man is cashing checks

in your name.

He wears new shoes.

Under his arms – old boxes.

(first published in West Branch)

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Reconstructive Criticism

When the Inquisitor comes you will be

in bed with your poems.

He will summon you by banging pipes

in your dreams.

His hands will knead your shoulder like clay,

and he will speak as a just god.

Who is the you of your poems?

Why is he drowning in dreams?

Why is he listening to stones?

He will circumcise your excess with a pen.

He will re‑form your point of view,

and when he leaves, you will be he.

(first published in Mostly Maine)

Black Crows

Michael Smetzer — Sat, 15 May 2010 10:02:36 +0000

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Black crows. Silent crows.
Me on my path in the morning
startled by a silence of crows.
Crows in a bush in the morning.
Crows by my path in the morning.

Large Black Silent

Crows watching me in the morning.
Me watching crows in the morning.
Standing by a bush watching crows
watch me in the morning.

Path Crows Bush Me Morning

(First published in Kansas Quarterly)

Smetzer Graves Near Clinton, Kansas

Michael Smetzer — Thu, 13 May 2010 11:26:53 +0000

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To have lived a decade here

before I found these names:

Edith Smetzer

Daugh. of D. & E. Smetzer

Died 1886

Aged 14 days

her infant bones the earliest in the churchyard

John Smetzer

Died June 18, 1892

Aged 74 years, 5 months, 15 days

at 61 he had been the oldest of the Ohio Smetzers

who traveled west to Kansas

and disappeared.

These things I have heard of my great great uncle:

that he was illiterate,

that he never married,

that he was a hired man,

that he was the only man of his family

never to own land.

And I understood that he moved westward

across the land

like a lateral root

hardly disturbing the leaves.

So here you ended, old uncle,

your plot open to the sky,

buried more deeply in your faint depression

of earth

than ever you plowed.

It is evening.

Light blue still marks the western edge,

but the sky above is growing higher, thinning,

falling back through darker blues

to the blackness behind the stars.

And you, uncle, are still thinning

in your darkness,

still dissolving into this place I’ve come to.

The darkness dissolves my family name

and leaves me open to a field of stones.

Years from now, my great nephew’s children

may hear of me

that I never married

that I worked for wages,

that I never owned land.

And I would like them to understand

that I was an illiterate of the earth,

as transient in my time as John in his,

as transient really as Edith there,

who never knew the soil

before it closed her in.

(first published in Kansas Quarterly)

Working the Tar House

Michael Smetzer — Tue, 11 May 2010 11:43:38 +0000

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All day you sit with the pumps
and smell the tar, hot tar
on its way to the steel mill boilers.

Some days they burn gas.
Then if it’s warm you leave
a single pump idling
and sit outside in the shade
of the two-story tar tank.

You set your hard hat on the concrete
and watch smoke trail from the stacks
or stare at the blast furnace lights.

In winter you stay inside.
Tar leaks over everything.
It runs out hot and fluid,
then hardens to asphalt.

Tar on your hands,
tar on your blue-gray clothes,
bits of tar in your ham sandwiches.
Tar and layers of tar
on the pipes and pumps and floor.

Conversation is a call
to add or take off a pump.
Even with four pumps on,
there is little to do.

Each day, for each active pump,
you change the metal filter
that strains out the hard chunks.
First you hammer the valve lever
to divert the flow.

Then you unscrew the nuts
that hold down the filter lid.
You slide a pipe under the handle
and pry up the twenty-pound lid
till you break the tar’s seal.

When the seal breaks, the lid flies up,
snags on the bolts, and falls back down
with a clap and a spray of hot tar.

You raise the lid and set it off.
With a hook you lift out
the steel filter, dripping tar,
and carry it in a bucket
to a bubbling bath of solvent and steam.

You put in a clean filter
and bolt down the lid,
tightly, so the pressure won’t spray tar.

Your buddy has left five-gallon buckets
to fill up under leaks.
Slopping tar on your pants,
you haul them out to the chest-high hopper.

Or nights you dump them
in the waste pool of water and sludge,
the safety pit under the tar tank.

For hours you sit on a bucket
and watch the pressure gauge on the line.
You breathe the vapors and
you sweat among the pipes.

After work you go home with a smell
you can’t wash away.
It clings to you through all your days off.

Some nights you stop along the road
and vomit from the vapors that condense
as a black goo on the hairs of your nose.

Your skin itches where the tar
has soaked your clothes
and stained you black.

(first published in New Letters)