Peter Mladinic

Woodmanland. 3 Poems by Peter Mladinic

by

Battle

Rejection’s not the end of the world.
Were there no rejection—
from an editor, from a bank,
from a would be paramour—
there’d be no acceptance, no embrace
in the world of letters,
in life, in love. The sting of hate
quite real. Then there’s indifference—
a feeling of numb like when
you get a shot in your hand
and your hand is numb—
only it’s all in your mind.
The end of the world is like when the man
went out for a pizza and came home
and found his wife dead
on the living room floor; or John
who snapped his briefcase open
and shut before going into class,
and I know Susan remembers that snap
and learned as I did he died in his sleep.
The lump in the breast, the X ray’s
dark spot are signs. The night
our town’s chief of police was out
in the middle of nowhere, not wearing
a seatbelt, spelled the end.
My father at the end battled cancer.
When healthy he bowled strikes,
won games for his team.
Why we always hear of someone’s
battling cancer miffs me.
It’s not like Daniel fighting the lion
in the Bible. Maybe it is.

Tricky

I like you unconditionally
My like for you is a red rose bouquet
an armful of flowers
I’d like to place in your arms

I’d like to pet your horse Tricky
My like for you is a white cloud
in a blue sky
a pond on which ducks glide

unconditional
like that song Night and Day
coming through headphones
I want to know your eyelashes

Have you ever been to the sweetheart
festival in Clovis?
Have you ever said I’m Angela
while shaking hands with a man
with a name tag on his shirt?

You love Tricky, Tricky loves you
Other than that I assume nothing
Do you bowl, drink Diet Coke?
Have you a pen pal in Indiana?

I’m full of questions
I wish they were long-stemmed white
roses

I’d like to know something
about your eyelashes
and if you talk on an iPhone or an android
Your blood-type, social security number and

Where do you see yourself five years
from now don’t concern me
What kind of perfume you wear
I’m more interested in stuff like that

Woodmanland

I want to move to Woodmanland,
there very different from here.
For one, trees. Also cold.
No ice fisher, my embrace the cold days
past, still I want to.
What would a place be like
in the middle of its name man?
Long winters, lots of trees, few people.
A hospital close by? Might not have to look
far to see a moose. I’ve never seen one.
A dirty look from a person’s one thing,
but a moose? Racks
like dishes on roofs for cable, only oval,
shatter ribs in the wild, steeped in snow.

I’d rather see a moose from a bus window,
or the moose sits next to me on the bus.
I name him Roger. We pull into Houlton,
boringly like where I am. Only cleaner.
Roger says, What you don’t see is the high
crime rate.
—But it’s so clean.
He says, Looks can deceive.
Why did you want to leave where you were?
—I liked the name, but now we’re in Houlton.
Have you ever been to Woodmanland?
Yes, he says. Now I’m with you, only,
I’m not real, and you’ve gone nowhere.
Oh, but I have, I think, not saying so,
not wanting to contradict a moose.
 

 
Peter Mladinic has published three books of poems: Lost in Lea, Dressed for Winter, and Falling Awake in Lovington, all with the Lea County Museum Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico. His fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.

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St.Francis. A Poem by Peter Mladinic

by 
St. Francis

Katie Zwerling, leave everything behind
and come with me to St. Francis,
a little town way up in Maine, way up
there, way out there. When people say
out in the middle of nowhere they mean
this place, surrounded by logging roads

cleared a hundred years ago so trucks
could haul logs to populated places.
You’ve seen roads surrounded by trees.
These roads are really surrounded by trees!
You drive on, it’s a bit scary. Nothing’s
around these winding dirt roads but trees

and this town, where we could settle
in a house with heat, air conditioning. 
Would the house have central air?  Maybe.
But it would have electricity, plumbing,
and we’d be close to the logging roads,
get to know them so we wouldn’t get stuck

or lost. People want to be near the ocean,
or a lake or a golf course. I’d take these
logging roads any day over a golf course
or a mall, roads with trees around, pines,
evergreens, no vehicles, except us in ours,
my jeep with a GPS, so as not to get lost.

So much snow in winter, a snowmobile
would be needed.  I could buy one!
Snowsuits to keep us warm. Go out 
on those roads, not too far, and come back
to our house in St. Francis. Both of us
stripped naked I could kiss you all over.

We could make love, then go to a local cafe,
come home, watch Reign on Netflix.
St. Francis has WiFi. We could call people
on our cell phones. When logging roads
were made, did they had telephones way up 
there?  It’s way, way different from here.

 

 
Peter Mladinic has published three books of poems: Lost in Lea, Dressed for Winter, and Falling Awake in Lovington, all with the Lea County Museum Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico. His fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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Peter Mladinic’s Schaeffer Poems

by

(i.)
 
Schaeffer Is Next
 
The next vape, the next corner
To turn, the next day, he drove
To Maidenrock. It was a Saturday.
Schaeffer thinks of the adjective,
Then, next, please, please added
To soften the blow that one is next,
Whether one likes it or not. Schaeffer
Thinks, I’m next. He thinks:
The next vampire film, the next
Trip to Walmart, the next bite
Of the apple, the next diver
To leap from the plane and pull
The parachute string to soften the fall.
 
Don’t sit under the apple tree
With anyone else but Kim Kardashian West
Don’t sit under the apple tree
With anyone but Derek Jeter
With anyone but Taylor Swift
With anyone but a descendent of Clyde
Barrow, with anyone whose surname
Is Lake
Don’t do it, don’t sit there with
Casey Anthony, Susan Smith
Or Charles Manson
 
The next vape, the next hero
The next vampire, the next banquet
The next moment, who knows
Anything might happen:
A river might flood,
A tree might catch on fire.
 
There’s the Rita H angle
How she was glamorous in her voice
Her eyes, her long wavy red hair
Her spangled dress that hugged her hips
Glamorous in her walk in how she moved
Back and forth on stage
Under the spotlight in Gilda.
Then, spin the wheel of time forward,
Say, twenty years and find her
Alone in a room. Dementia
Has taken over.
She is cared for, incontinent
Can’t wipe herself or wash her
Once lovely hair. Oh,
The waking nightmare bird
Perches on her shoulder
That was once bare and aflame
With lust, all of her.
 
(ii.)
 
Schaeffer’s Notion of Beauty
 
Bombs turn a building to rubble,
rescuers find
an arm, a leg.
 
In a mall a maniac fires a rifle,
leaving in his wake
dead children.
 
Hate manifestos
all over the Internet,
in the world there is danger:
 
a racist shoots Satyajit Chandra
at a bus stop
and nothing is done.
 
Still, even now, beauty
is with us.
 
(iii.)
 
Shaeffer Wonders
 
This accident from 1965 astonishes
Schaeffer. He writes: I was far away,
but I can see the broad boulevard,
the side streets of my hometown,
and can imagine the Davis car
blows thoughtless through the Stop
and slams the rear of the Edwards car
 
so that car spins a quick whirlwind
on this Sunday night of light traffic.
The lethal turbulence in this time
before seatbelts flings rag doll-like
Mr Edwards from behind the wheel
out to the street, his head dashes
the curb, instant dead. Mr Edwards’
 
going from his house to Lucille
Desaderio’s split-second stopped
on the boulevard, that two mile drive
disrupted with Lucille who sat close
between Mr Edwards and Chris
his son, both passengers still there
in the gold sedan’s front bench.
 
The sedan’s spinning stilled,
the turbulence quieted, still as death
that intersection. I can hear sirens,
see two patrol cars on the scene,
a yellow ambulance’s red top whirls
in the still night, a badge, his back
to the ambulance, jots with a pen
 
in a pad. The ambulance’s back door
open, the sheeted dead lifted in
and wonder if Lucille that night wore
shorts, sandals, a thin gold cross
on a chain and at what hour Lucille
unhooked that chain’s clasp and
wonder if a red white Marlboro box
 
fell from dash to floorboard, Chris’s
cigarettes. Did he reach for one
and with a Zippo light it? Its orange tip
in the dark glows as the badge jots
with a ballpoint and the ambulance
siren sounding leaves the boulevard
and Lucille and Chris leave, and John
 
Davis, the other driver. I remember
Mr Edwards dove perfectly off a high
board, arrow-straight down into a pool
of blue water rippled with sun rings.
Iron-gray hair, tall and straight, at 47
still athletic, he walks out a door
with car keys in hand, that night.
 

 
Peter Mladinic has published three books of poems: Lost in Lea, Dressed for Winter, and Falling Awake in Lovington, all with the Lea County Museum Press. He lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

 

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