Weird and Bound for Hell by Steve Klepetar

She tells me that my poems are weird
and that I’m probably bound for Hell.
I ask her why. “Ghosts,” she says.
“Your poems are full of ghosts,
and sometimes you write about Hell
as if you were already at home there.
Even when you’re trying to write pretty,
there are ghosts in the trees
or by the pond or flitting up the hills.
That’s kind of like witchcraft, you know?
Not something you should write about.
I’m going to stop talking to you now.
I try not to have conversations
with people who are Hell bound.
Just, you know, mend your ways, ok?
And try not to be so weird.”
She walks away toward a knot of people
in pastel party clothes who are talking
about owls and fireflies and horses sleeping in the rain.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Recent collections include A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press) and Why Glass Shatters (One Sentence Chaps).