Poetry: Selections From Mather Schneider

FUNERAL MUSIC

 

José José was a great singer

and now he’s dead.

Mexico is in mourning.

Two weeks of drama on the tv,

his songs nonstop on all radio channels.

The problem is he’s got family in Mexico 

and family in Miami and they’re fighting 

over where to bury the body.

They could cremate him and then split the ashes

but they won’t do that because he’s Catholic. 

His song Que Triste is pretty good,

powerful stuff back when they knew 

how to make music.

Que Triste means How Sad.

It made me cry the first few times I heard it.

Natalia and I used to watch videos 

together and drink beer, during the good times

long gone now.

Natalia can’t drink anymore.

I drink enough for both of us and a couple more people too

but I don’t cry no matter how much I drink

or what song I am listening to.

I usually just get angry.

Sometimes I get angry at death and sometimes 

I get angry at myself and sometimes I get angry 

at Natalia and sometimes I get angry and I 

don’t know why.

Death is the main thing I think.

I probably need therapy. 

I wonder if José José went to therapy. 

His family needs to go to therapy 

from the looks of it

as they argue over a corpse.

It’s funny that his name 

is just the same name twice.

When I die bury me wherever you want to.

You can burn me up, that’s fine too.

Hang me in the town square for 

all I care, and play

whatever music pleases you. 

 

 

 

SEVERED

 

I found some severed hands 

in a plastic bag  

 

tossed down behind the gas station

removed from their owners, for thievery, por rateros,

 

the kind of bag

you put beer in with ice

 

but no ice for these hands, rancid

in the Puerto Lobo heat, flies, dried blood. 

 

Now I’m sitting in the car outside our house.

For three hours I’ve been here

 

afraid to go in and face Natalia

sick in bed.

 

I think of that beautiful sad story 

I read long ago 

 

about the man whose hands got him into trouble

when he only wanted love.

 

It was real, that’s the problem, 

it wasn’t a metaphor, 

 

that plastic bag full of severed hands. 

I’ve stolen things. Hasn’t everybody? 

 

One time when I was young I was too sick for school 

and I was home alone, in bed, 

 

and a man snuck into our house like Death 

and came into my bedroom. 

 

I woke up and said, Who are you? He ran

stomping up the stairs and I heard the door

 

slam and his truck tires throw gravel out

of our Illinois driveway. 

 

I drew a picture of him

and they used the picture to put him in jail. He only lived 

 

a few miles away. I drew that picture  

with my own hands and everybody

 

said I was a real good artist.

I just hope

 

it was the right man. 

Some peoples’ hands have scars,

 

some are grotesque. Some  

don’t work well, they tremble.

 

Some are beautiful and smooth

as buckeyes. Some are so calloused they cut

 

you when you shake them. 

Some of them cup

 

the sunlight.

Imagine the hands 

 

that held the thieves down, the hand that raised 

the machete, the hands 

 

that fell. Hand shadows, hand puppets,

hands of time, hands of God. A clock

 

without hands. Why 

couldn’t that plastic bag 

 

have had a six pack of beer in it instead? 

Natalia has beautiful hands. What would I not take

 

from this world to give to her? 

She’s dying and I’m afraid

 

to go inside to touch her, to try to steal

a kiss, or coax a rare smile. 

 

I keep thinking about that 

plastic bag of severed hands and how 

 

I will manage to go on 

without her.

 

 

 

THE CHILDREN INSIDE US

 

Natalia and are watching Snow White on tv

this autumn afternoon.

 

Snow White of the pure life 

who heals with a smile.

 

Commercials every eight minutes

for cleaning products 

 

and shiny new cars

and medicine like poisoned apples.

 

The snow in the fairytale is not cold,

not real, unlike the sores 

 

on Natalia’s tongue

or the puss that comes like beer foam

 

or the pills

or the butterless popcorn 

 

or the bleached underwear 

on the clothesline. 

 

I hold her wishing she could draw my health in 

like sweet blue smoke.

 

She falls asleep. I wonder what 

she’s dreaming and if 

 

she’ll open her eyes again.

I want to kiss her to lift the curse

 

but the doctor won’t let me, the doctor who is now 

her only prince.

 

She wakes up five minutes later

and asks me if it’s over yet.

 

Not yet, my sweet, I say, but soon,

as the evil sorceress cackles

 

at the foolish fresh-cheeked lovers

and the swords of the fearless 

 

horsemen flash

on the mountain.

 

 

 

 

 

Mather Schneider divides his time between Tucson, Arizona and northern Mexico. He has several books available including his first novel, The Bacanora Notebooks (Anxiety Press) and the recently released book of stories, Port Awful (Anxiety Press). He works as an exterminator.