My Father Raises His Voice by Steve Klepetar

Once you argued with the handyman,
whose English was much worse than yours.
He had failed to show up at our apartment
to fix a leaky faucet, which had progressed
from a trickle to a steady stream, and you
were so mad that you raised your voice,
as you almost never did, and he began to cry
as if whatever had beaten him down in his
dreadful life had finally gotten too much.
You patted his shoulder, spoke gently, using
simple words. He nodded his head.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “I get tools, I fix,”
and half an hour later the faucet was fine
and you and he were in our tiny kitchen,
drinking beer and nibbling smelly cheese.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He serves on the editorial staffs of Verse-Virtual and Right Hand Pointing. He is a regular contributor to Lothlorien Poetry Review, One Sentence Poems, and Verse-Virtual.