hairy as paws, a shiny bald spot, a red, triangular nose.
My breath fogs the glass, and another door swings shut.
stains the early morning grass.
for fear of seeing their excavations at close hand.
and a faraway look in your lovely brown eyes.
as if something were rising and they were preparing the way.
Steve Klepetar lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where he taught literature and creative writing at Saint Cloud State University. Klepetar’s work has appeared worldwide, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Expound, The Muse: India, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Voices Israel, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (including four in 2016). He has also done several collaborations with composer Richard Lavenda of Rice University in Houston, including a one-act opera, Barricades, for which he wrote the libretto. Klepetar is the author of eleven poetry collections and chapbooks, the most recent of which include Family Reunion (Big Table), A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), and How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps).