Steve Klepetar's work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net,
including three in 2014. His most recent collection is an e-chapbook, Return of the Bride of Frankenstein, from Kind of a
Hurricane Press. Klepetar teaches English literature at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. Read more on his website here.
Mahana No Atua
(Day of the Gods)
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Mahana No Atua by Paul Gauguin, 1894
|
On
the day of the god, she
lowers her feet into terrible
waters, bleeds her
wide
stream, red silk over sand
pink as melon flesh, war
as her sun-stained
skin,
head tilted, hair disappearing
in black swoops beyond
her shoulders
and back
to broken rainbow
haunting water's surface,
playing deep
tunnels
of her eyes, mysterious
as dreams of sleeping children
curled up
into themselves,
naked at her naked side.
broods on
a blue chaise longue
in yellow and blue striped dress
ignoring the fat white
cat curled
on her pale knees. And now she's
angles in blue with tea things
clashing
on a silver tray, shaft of cigarette plugged
in scarlet lips. See
bent, one stroking the other, to soothe
or perhaps
keep time with a drumbeat
that syncopates her mind as she glances
away from
her worried guest. Flocks
of starlings float before her eyes, little
ghosts
of some nostalgia she has flung
into the street where a naked woman
tumbles
across a horse gouging circles with its bright red mane.
Four Trees
After the painting by Egon Schiele, 1917
Four oaks on a mountain plain,
three with
crowns of orange gold
![]() |
Four Trees by Egon Schiele, 1917
|
as sun sinks toward a jagged peak.
One is nearly bare,
its few leaves
clinging, rags on emaciated limbs.
Striations of sky appear
through
gaps, thick bands of white, gray,
and brown, with few traces
of
blazing red, a hectic color in this
slowly fading light. No grass,
just
these great, deep rooted things
which grip this hard, high
place,
waiting in windless air for night
to rise just beyond the dying
sun.
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