Poetry: Selections from Mather Schneider

A Plague on Man

Woke up unsure about the meaning of existence

or the nature of the soul

next to a beautiful woman who I cannot touch

it seems impossible to have 2 good days in a row

I write to know myself

and to know God

but it’s not working

still haven’t got the vaccine

“There is a plague on man:

the opinion that he knows something”

Montaigne said in his tights and frilly neckwear

I still can’t control my dreams though I’ve been trying

I seem to get a grip sometimes but it slips away

like a salamander down a manhole

the only cure I’ve ever found for what I’ve got

is killing me

my stomach jumps and rolls in clumsy agony

I’ve missed my window

the bank account is scraping bottom

and now the water pump’s crapped out

Call Me Jessy James 

I lost my car key in the sand at the beach

I hid it so it wouldn’t get stolen then couldn’t find it again

I was hungover and sad and distracted

about losing my last friend on Facebook

I nearly cried looking for my key

in all that sand

ashamed and foolish and sunburned and dehydrated

it was a beautiful day but that hardly mattered

I had to take a taxi to the house to get the spare key

I told the taxi driver I would pay him when I opened my car

to get my wallet

he was desperate enough to trust me

back at the beach the taxi driver was pissed I got sand on his seat

I had to pay him an extra 50 pesos

there was a guy washing my car

I knew him

he was always there at the beach

he said,

How’s it going Jessy James?

he always called me Jessy James

no idea why except he’s a little nuts

I gave him 20 pesos for washing the car with his dirty rag

he said,

You sure you don’t want me to get you a nice girl

or something good to smoke,

Jessy James?

No, that’s ok, I said

I drove home and Natalia scolded me like I was a child

though I have far

far fewer years to live than a child

This is why we need a metal detector, Natalia said

I had to give her that one

about once a month she comes up with a nugget

Sitting in the Bar Car on the Amtrak While a Storm Moves in Over Illinois in the Springtime 

I’m inside this box rattling

toward a cemetery called Swan Lake

 

near my old home town

where they will lower into the ground

 

another box, a smaller box.

From the train window

 

the farther away the farmhouse

the slower it moves by,

 

the more gently time seems

to touch it, and the farm boy

 

who stands near the tracks

with his eyes wide as flattened pennies

 

grows as we move toward him

and then he’s gone in a whiplash.

 

A woman at another table

begs her mother to tell her

 

why men are so distant,

why people leave, why things

 

have to happen this way.

Her mother doesn’t know  

 

and the woman begins to cry.

I stand to go to the bathroom

 

and when the train lurches I stumble

into her and spill her drink.

 

She begins to scream

and bat at her wet blouse

 

while her mother tries to calm her.

I tell her I’m sorry,

 

I’m sorry,

as the heavy green trees

 

beyond the glass

shake in the wind

 

like giant wet dogs

in slow motion.  

 

I’m inside this box

rattling toward a cemetery

 

called Swan Lake

near my old home town

 

but there will be no swans. There

have never been any swans.

The Christening 

Yesterday Pedro was on his way to his baby’s baptism

after working all morning throwing mud on cement blocks

some guy fender bended him at Alameda

but he didn’t have a moment to parley

he showed up 5 minutes late to the church

the preacher slammed the door in his face

dead-bolted it

Pedro locked out and the rest of us locked in

Pedro’s wife Yolanda was with the baby in the front row

with all the other mamas and papas and babies

waiting to be blessed so they’ll be let into heaven

it was 108 degrees

preacher wouldn’t turn the ac on

nobody knew what his deal was

hand fans going wild

babies crying

murmurs and whispered protests

Pedro standing outside yelling and pounding on the door

the whole world could hear

Pedro with hard hands and cement on his pants

preacher did his thing with the babies

mumbled the words and threw the holy water

in an assembly line manner

then split out the back like a cockroach

secret exit

some lackey finally unlocked the front doors

we all flooded outside

each family paid 500 dollars for the ceremony

there are now 20 new babies in stinky old Hermosillo

waiting to be embraced by the great unknown

Pineapple

My thumb twitches

I’ve been drunk for 2 weeks straight

the beach is closed for quarantine

Natalia eats pineapple and stares into her phone

I can’t get away from her

we are forced to live together like an arranged marriage

just following orders

sick all the time coughing and sniffling and vomiting

she’s been crying again

she doesn’t want to die

but we both know I’ll go first

the idea is by dying first I will be spared

the suffering of living without her

but sometimes I wonder about that

for now here we are holed-up like boll weevils

there’s nothing on tv and nothing to do

except watch people fight on Twitter

about Heraclitus and book titles

sometimes there are little red hearts from strangers far away

and sometimes there is pineapple

Mather Schneider's poetry and prose have appeared in many places since 1994. He has 6 books available and lives in Mexico.