Poetry: Selections from Mather Schneider

Getting Old 

Getting old is no good

you get the jowls and your bones creak

and you have to wipe your ass for 10 minutes

and then again a half hour later

Just wait it gets worse says my old mother

Dad’s got two new hips

even grandma is still alive can you believe it

she’s 96

they all live thousands of miles from this small Mexican town

where I count change for a pack of smokes

walk to the corner store with my 33 pesos

Chucho follows me jumping and acting a fool

he loves to go to the store though I never buy him anything

he sniffs the garbage everywhere

chases a cat or two

old Chucho now 5 years old but still a pup at heart

except some days he seems tired

and wants to crawl onto my lap and sleep

he must have some arthritis from when he got run

by a car a couple years ago

Getting old is no good Chucho

he looks at me and tilts his head and cocks his ear

I complain to him about not getting laid anymore

because the old lady’s got a sickness and says it hurts

but poor Chucho’s probably been laid at best

3 times in his whole life

and he doesn’t even have pornography to look at like I do

when the old lady goes to the drugstore

The Duck 

A duck showed up in Isabela’s yard last week

just this lone little duck out of nowhere

I’ve never seen a duck in this town

there are no ponds or lakes

it was ornery as fuck this duck

it chased Isabela’s dogs and cats around and even ate their food

it bit one of Isabela’s little girls on the finger

they tried to catch it but it was fast and agile

I don’t know what they planned on doing with it if they caught it

maybe eat it

it didn’t lay any eggs or do anything useful

it was white and black

it stayed for a couple of days while Isabela and the girls watched it

from the window

it made the sounds ducks do

which don’t make much sense to humans

it shit on the front porch

maybe it had been migrating and just let down for a breather

but we never see any “V’s” in the sky here

only the smoke from where the city burns the trash out in the desert

where they find dead bodies sometimes

then one day the duck up and disappeared

back into the void where it came from

just like Isabela’s second husband last year

and her first husband a couple years before that

Witchcraft

Rosalita told Sofia to put a drop of her own pee

in her man’s beer

if she wanted him to love her

so Sophia did it

and by God it worked

then 11 months later Sofia was near to pop-out a baby

and her man was standing in the dirt road at 3 a.m.

screaming obscenities at the house

pissing on the front stoop

until the cops showed up

and slapped him with a half-ass-enforced

restraining order

the baby boy who was named after him and looked just like him

grew to resent his life and his fate

until the age of 18 when he left

the old mud-hole of Hermosillo  

and settled into a plumbing LLC in Mexicali

where he makes a pretty good living to this day

though you’d never know it by his cheapo

Christmas gifts

and the weird vibes we get on social media

from his cornsilk-haired significant other

and all her psycho family from Acapulco  

Outside the Drugstore 

Natalia’s got a zit on her clit

among other things

we drive to the drugstore to see if they have something

I sit in the car and wait for her

the guy who hangs out in the parking lot washing car windows

comes over and talks to me

he knows me

he asks me if the wife is sick

Yes, I say

I’m annoyed he’s come over because I know he wants money

I’m feeling sorry for myself

he’s wearing a pair of ragged shorts and no shirt

2 mismatched sandals on his brown dirty feet

How are you doing? I say

Not so good, he says, the place I was staying in burned down last night

burned all my clothes

burned my bicycle too

now I got no place to stay

(he says all of this in Spanish)

Natalia comes out of the drugstore scowling in the sun

scowling at the guy talking to me

scowling at me

They don’t have anything, she says, bunch of idiots in this place

Who’s this guy? she says

His house burned down, I say

It wasn’t my house, the guy says, I was just staying there

Well ok take care, I say

Hey you wouldn’t have a pair of pants you could give me? he says

No, sorry, I say

which is true but I don’t think he believes me

he’s been smiling the whole time

like only the down and out can smile

I hand him a few pesos and back the car away

People take advantage of you, Natalia says

as if she’s made a wise and earth-shattering pronouncement

The Puppy 

The only thing that keeps Suegra from going completely nuts

is her grandson Pedrito

Pedrito is her rock

he’s the only reason she has for living

Pedrito turned 8 last week

he said to Suegra,

“I can’t have a birthday party this year can I Nana?

It’s ok, I know it’s because of the virus.”

Isabella brought a puppy over to the house

as a birthday gift for Pedrito

she left the puppy with a bag of food

just as Pedrito’s mother had left him with Suegra

when he was 3

but the food soon got eaten up

and the puppy shit on the floor and Pedrito didn’t seem too interested

he only wants to play video games

they didn’t even name it

Suegra gave the puppy away to a stranger walking by the house

the stranger took the puppy thinking it was his lucky day

now there’s one less mouth to feed for Suegra

and a little less shit on the floor

never give somebody an animal as a gift

unless it’s an animal you can eat

preferably already butchered

it doesn’t matter if your heart is in the right place

or not

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