Two
poems from Jim Klein's I Didn't Know If I Was Afoot or on
Horseback
followed
by a note on the author
I
Didn't Know If I Was Afoot or on Horseback
You can put that on my tombstone
with little fear of vagueness or misunderstanding.
So much for so little must seem remarkable.
What offers itself, finally, is a surface
with all of its gradations
and erosions.
Appliances fall back.
The body is scoured into touch.
The life becomes a house;
the house, a city.
Hand and knee leave the ground.
Gromer
Wilkie
His junk yard is an oxide jungle.
Even inside his abundance takes root.
Rusty chains creep up
from the ferrous underfoot
to brown blossoms
rank on his fat pillars.
Tools hang dead ripe.
Every day men squat around
watching Gromer.
He’s the only one in town
to weld on Sundays
or to have the nickel rods
to braze a manifold.
Once he cut a truck in half
and welded it back.
Gromer knows how
to make his little bit,
and how to help them
make their little bit too.
He lays a pretty good bead.
©
Jim
Klein was born in Sawyer, North Dakota in 1941 and attended
public schools in Brookings, South Dakota, Lawrence, Kansas,
and Newton Centre, Massachusetts. He graduated from Franklin
College (BA.), Southern Illinois (MA) and the University of
Illinois (PhD) He was an Associate Professor of English at Fairleigh
Dickinson University, Rutherford and also taught at St. Peter's
College, Jersey City, NJ until his retirement this year. Klein
has published more that 100 poems in publications including
the Berkeley Review, the Beloit Poetry Journal,
Joe Soap's Canoe, Oxford Magazine, the Plastic
Tower, Onthebus, Pulpsmith, Gandhabba,
and many times in the Wormwood Review, including a Feature
Section. He
also published articles in The Christian Century, James
Joyce Quarterly, and College English. He
is married to Zorida Mohammed, and has three childen.
"I
Didn't Know If I Was Afoot or on Horseback" first appeared
in Fatlip; "Gromer Wilkie" first appeared in
the Wormwood Review.
