Steve Klepetar

A Pair of Blackbirds

My father saw a pair of blackbirds hanging from a pine branch one
winter morning above deep February snow. They were moor wanderers,
frightened of nothing, raucous and tough in their shiny feathers and
golden beaks, but they were dangling, black and dead for all their bravado;

Day seemed to bend from each cardinal point, pushing slowly toward
those corpses, folding wood and sky and snow under breathing eyelids,
waking nightmare in the cold. And who had hung them there and for
what warning or ritual steeped in feathers, blood and atavistic wind?

Steve Klepetar teaches literature and creative writing at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and his latest chapbook, “My Father Teaches Me a Magic Word,” was recently published by Flutter Press.