Charolotte

She doesn't look like
her photograph: the same sadness,
but missing the imprisoned signalling,
small gestures of window waving
like a little girl locked in her room.

Here in the flesh she seems
not brave enough,
sunk, absent, soft lace and worn calico
replaced with khaki and denim.

How do people get so stuck in dutiful detail?
Where do their minutes go
spent without mischief or magic?
Is it low calorie un-nutritious love,
group hugs and suspicion, shivering in the cold?

The History of Poetry: Sarah the Waitress' Poem

We have always been beggars
since the troupedours
gathered crowds at the corners
of deprived broken villages
owned by peasants, and implored
all to come and listen to the songs.
The audience was always innocent.

I was touched to see you smile
when I gave you a piece of myself.
I didn't have to beg you and
you even offered to pay.

The audience would come
if they had nothing else to do.
The singers would fill up the empty hours
and sometimes a few coins would flow.
We lived between the towns,
in wooden carts drawn by starving horses.
We had no place to go
and nothing to do but watch.

When Something is Wrong with the Furnace

I get loonier and loonier,
my betrayals deepen,
falsehoods freak
and the house gets
colder, rain is
going to turn to ice.
What used to be life
turns into keeping
time.

Woman I Wish I Could Have Photographed

An endurance head
of an ancient survivor race,
that lasted but never thrived,
nods when the man beside her speaks.
She hears him and her eyes
wander into the void of the bus floor.
The yes is a signal that she hopes will make him stop.

On one side, she has slow but even eyes
that would never make a mistake out of passion.
On the other side her face is broken,
hairline and brow melted, barely held up.

Her face is labor,
attached to a hard round body,
spine bent forward, endures,
but never rebels.

The question written into it is how
do I handle joy.

What I Do With Sadness

The thirty-five
instances of tears
repeat like themes
in a symphony by Brahms,

next to me in my room
and rolled up,
buried in the warehouse
below my house.

I compress them
into oil.

Don Schaeffer established Enthalpy Press and has published 5 chap books including "Time Meat" and "The Word Cow and the Pig O' Love." ISBN series: 0-9687017 Recent poetry has been published in "Ascent Aspirations, " "Loch Raven Review,""Quills," "Aust Cai Hong Ying" and "North Amerian Maple" (in Chinese Translation and English), "Lilly Lit," "Burning Effigy Press," "Understanding Magazine," "Melange," "Tryst," and others. His first book of poetry, Almost Full" was published in 2006, second book, "A Body Event" in June 2008. His third book, "Notes of a Digital Ghost" is in press. Don holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from City University of New York (1975) and lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba with his wife, Joyce.

Email: Don Schaeffer

Return to Table of Contents