Steven D. Schroeder: Two Poems

Wear Your Hip-Waders | Penelope at the Singer

Wear Your Hip-Waders

Last week, I caught the Devil fishing,
        by which I neither mean I hooked
        and landed Old Scratchy on a nymph,
        nor an infernal angling metaphor, but that
he was practicing his tick-tock cast
into a hole on the Fryingpan River,
        and since it's Lucifer himself, you have
        an into the fire joke. No, no,
nothing more than a fiendish fisherman's tan,
not smoke and sulfur, tinted his skin.
His identity was written across his face
        and the red horned hat reading Satan,
        letters hand-stitched in a sinner sweatshop.
Curious about the lives of such luminaries —
        witness when I met the Lieutenant Governor —
I asked "What are they biting on?"
"Egg-sucking leeches, Mr. Schroeder," he replied.
        I think he meant the fly, though
        that vest had rooms for real leeches.
Despite being downstream from the dam runoff,
the current roiled and spat and boiled
and remained the second-damnedest thing around.
        Now, I'm known from Gunnison to Glenwood —
obviously, I could out-cool the Man
        from South of Texas, or overheat him.
I lured him with a cutthroat stare
        and waited. You guess Mr. Mephistopheles
        wanted a contest where netting the biggest
        rainbow won me a golden rod. Instead,
"I'll make you a straight-up deal,
a favor for your soul," he said.
        This story would be a foot longer
        if I could crawfish on the contract
        and nail his nose with backlash, but
the thing I'd receive meant my fate
was signed and sealed. The Devil laughed
and ambled away, setting hoofprints in stone
        or rather his bootprints in the mud,
        then muddy marks on the rock riprap
back up toward his boulder-towing pickup,
        the bed stuffed with suckerfish flip-flopping.
        And what gift would make Hell worthwhile?
I got no wealth, fame, or fast
women, no ability to fly, no pony
        in return for eternity without trout streams.
On the other hand, fish can't listen.
Have I told you about the time
        I spear-hunted leopards from zebra-back?

Penelope at the Singer

That midlife-crisis ass Odysseus
passed sunset with his buddies, and she sewed
the burial shroud, telling her suitors Wait
until I'm finished. Not for love of hubby
or fear of wooing, but in spite — because
if he thought he'd escaped that easily,
she'd make their union last and last and last
beyond the concrete end, bitter indeed.
So she embroidered, paying no attention
to her household: the cheery yellow paint
came down with jaundice, friends embarked on boats
for Florida, and feral cats arrived
while she stitched pictures from her graduation,
engagement, outdoor wedding in the summer,
and walking tour across Arcadia:
the scenes expanding and unraveling
and static daily. Then her other half
phoned to say The ship is foundering,
I won't be home for dinner, and she knew
he meant for any dinner, and she had
nothing. She wandered stony halls to call
on suitors, but discovered they had left
the house en masse, no cold cuts in the fridge
and toilet seats all up. Her footfalls hollowed.
At last, admitting one inhabitant
remained, she gathered up the vast unfinished
epic of cloth and glided soft as age
to an adjoining bedroom, where she laid it
across the still-asleep Telemachus.

Poet's Biography:

Steven Schroeder edits The Eleventh Muse, the literary journal of the Poetry West organization, and work as a Certified Professional Résumé Writer. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The National Poetry Review (where he won the Laureate Prize), 32 Poems, The American Poetry Journal, Bat City Review, and elsewhere.