Three Poems  |  Ron Klassnik

The Waitress

When she leaves the restaurant, its world of Guinness and lobster—— black bra, white shirt—— all those tourists´ just “one more question please” and old men stumbling back to piss, she goes down into the earth and sleeps in a jar with a candle between her tits—— her delicate back on the curved edge of the glass, all night long.

My Mother

She likes to cook. She likes to knit. She likes to read in a hammock and nap. Looking up through the branches she thinks of her father who died before she was born. She used to dream she was waiting for him. The doorbell rings. She runs downstairs—— and standing there on the empty step she fills with trees and sky: the morning star, the moon; a bullet shot through a bird´s glowing white. I am stopped in the middle of a field. She is calling my name. I am looking down on the head of a cat. No body at all, just the head—— an island of greens and blues and blacks.

Remembering You

Each time I bring you back I can taste the sea. Three times this morning already: ordering coffee, hailing a taxi, and while I was still in bed, waiting for light. We ran into the waves glittering like the fur of a beast hunted through the woods. “Kill it!,” you shouted, your hands on my body, Saints chanting, spears tipped with blood. It rained all day. It rained all night. We lay together. The fire came and went. We lay together. We watched it rain—— a child grasping his mother´s hand in a butcher´s shop. It´s all so white and red, he thinks. A priest leans forward and sprays a cactus on his desk.

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