Poetry: Selections from Mather Schneider

Our Ruined Wedding

 

Natalia and I are going to get married so we invite my rich aunt

down to Mexico for the wedding.

She drives her big blue Cadillac all the way from Ohio.

It’s the nicest Cadillac.

It’s got a separate bedroom

and a kitchenette.

It sucks a lot of gas but that doesn’t matter.

We’re all outside the church waiting our turn

because a mafioso guy is getting married before us.

The mafioso’s wedding gets a little nuts.

The bride gets pissed off and runs out

right before the I do part

then a brawl erupts and the guns start firing.

The mafioso and his gang come out to the parking lot

where he sees my rich aunt’s Cadillac.

He’s jealous because it’s nicer than his car.

He blows the thing up with a rocket launcher.

My rich aunt is madder than a snake in a skillet.

She has to sleep in our little place in the barrio

and we’re embarrassed about the bare floor and the roaches.

The whole thing makes the papers the next morning.

There’s a photo of my aunt’s poor blue Cadillac.

The locals think it’s funny.

The fact that our wedding was ruined gets brushed under the rug.

My rich aunt takes a bus back to Mammoth

fixing to sue the whole country of Mexico.

There goes our wedding gift back to God’s country.

The bright side is Natalia is still in love with me

and she has an uncle who says he can fix that Cadillac.

I’m inclined to believe it.

I’ve seen things here in Mexico that take the cake.

I’ve seen miracles happen.

I’ve seen dreams get out of bed

and walk across the room.

Another World

 

A demonstration of some kind is happening

on the street.

I just happen to be walking by.

The police are arresting everyone involved,

beating people up

and the people are yelling and screaming

and crying.

A cop looks at me and tries to arrest me

but I explain I have nothing to do with anything.

He stuffs a dozen men in the back of his squad car

then asks me if he can give me a lift.

I get in the passenger side

and we’re roaring off with the sirens wailing.

The men are packed back there like immigrants,

angry and thin as beanstalks.

They push against the glass partition and it breaks.

I try to hold them off

but it is a losing battle.

I am just one man

and my heart isn’t in it.

I open the door and jump out,

roll down a hill like a pillbug

to yet another world trying a little

too hard to be believed.  

The Detention Center

 

I am in a detention center awaiting judgement.

I sit at a small school desk.

I feel somber and hopeless

and I don’t know what I’ve done.

A guard paces around watching me and the others.

He jokes with some but not me.

One wall is all glass

and outside a man in army fatigues does exercises in the sun

with old iron weights.

The landscape is nothing but flat concrete white as chalk

as far as I can see.

An old rusty diving board is bolted down

and a lizard does pushups on it.

A boy sits next to me.

He is sad because he murdered his mother.

A woman walks up to me and gives me a piece of chocolate.

She has brilliant white teeth and a slim lovely face,

she glows like a deep-sea fish

and smells of low tide.

She says it is the last piece of chocolate left

from the bag she bought in St. Louis

which had 1,090 pieces in it.

It is soft in my hand like a damp turd.

She walks away and sits behind a desk

and turns a movie projector on.

A black and white soundless film shows on the wall.

A man and the woman are walking through a forest.

They talk to each other

about something that seems important and mysterious.

They look delightedly guilty

but there are no subtitles

and no music

just the clicking and crackling of old film

and the crashing of iron against concrete

and the sobs of the boy

and the laughter of the guard like a fork

scraping down a chalkboard.

The Flicker

 

Someone puts me in the cockpit

of a jet plane and gives me a push.

 

I can’t control it.

The world blurs below me

 

like abstract expressionist paintings

in a bombed museum.

 

I push the buttons and pull the levers

but it changes nothing.

 

It is inevitable that I crash.

I dig myself out of the sand

 

and start crawling

like a baby pterodactyl.

 

A dune buggy comes up behind me.

A few of my old classmates are having some fun.

 

I hop in and we drive

through a field of tidal pools.

 

Everywhere we look is uphill.

The water flows down at us

 

and we swerve and curl around the

puddles and eddies

 

which bubble like albondigas.

As we approach the horizon something like a soft egg

 

lodges in my throat.

We hit the edge

 

like the crest of highest roller coaster.

The buggy and all my classmates drop away

 

into a bottomlessness gloom that swallows even memories

and rises like steam

 

off fresh offal.

I reach out and grab the edge of the earth,

 

pull myself up by my claws

and gallop down the hill on all fours

 

toward one lone shrinking

flicker of light.

The Carnival

 

I am wandering through a carnival.

A woman selling bracelets sells hello.

She flirts with me.

She shows me her bracelets which are not impressive.

They look like they were made in China.

She says she has more and opens a door

to a room I can’t see the end of

full of bracelets hanging on racks wall-to-ceiling.

They are all three colors:

white, beige and gray.

Two other women walk around in the room

who I recognize from other places

and times

where they wanted to sell me something too,

things bland and boring

and flat and ugly.

I see they are still lonely like they were before

when I could not help them

and they are older now just like I am.

I tell the woman I have to go

because my father is waiting.

When I see my father

he has just finished jogging.

He is sweating and hairy.

He’s annoyed because he had to wait for me

and now I can’t keep up.

I stop to look at every little thing

that he’s already seen and grown tired of

and I realize he is not as strong as I imagined

or as wise.

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