Mather Schneider

November 21, 2023

“Kite Weather” by Mather SchneiderPosted by

Mather Schneider

KITE WEATHER

I drive Miss Carr to her kidney dialysis
in my taxi at 5 a.m.

She’s 43 and clutches
a ratty blanket.

At the clinic she lays back
on a gray vinyl bed-chair

with several other liver-lidded pilgrims
who look like they’ve been raped

three days a week for years and years.
The machine reaches in

to her with its deep breathy hum
and the cruel tubes slurp

out her blood and pump
it back in purple, sterile

and cold. 5 hours later
she is released

and I take her home.
At a red light there is a city park

kitty-corner. A boy holds a string
leading to a yellow kite

a mile up in the blue sky.
Look at that, I say.

Miss Carr smiles and
lifts her head from her chest

like an anchor.
Her mouth is a taut line

which slackens for a moment,
a flash in the sun, and then the light

changes and we move on,
everything

getting smaller and
smaller

behind
us.

—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

_________

Mather Schneider: “I am a 40-year-old writer who has been published in the small press since 1995. I live in Tucson, Arizona, and drive a cab for a living.” (web)

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September 9, 2022

“Uncle Neto” by Mather SchneiderPosted by

Mather Schneider

UNCLE NETO

Uncle Neto was always either standing up
or lying down.
 
He didn’t like to sit.
 
He wasn’t fond of chairs
or stools
or sofas or any
of that nonsense.
 
Uncle Neto stood up
at the bar
he stood up at the party
stood up at work
in the yard
in the living room
while watching 
a ballgame.
 
Have a seat Uncle Neto, 
someone always said.
 
Naw,
I’m ok.
 
Eventually he’d go straight
from standing up
to lying down.
 
Uncle Neto lay down in bed
Uncle Neto lay down in the kitchen
Uncle Neto lay down in the yard.
 
The only time he ever sat
was while driving
his big old green truck
fidgety behind the wheel
especially if there was traffic.
He didn’t like it
and nobody else liked it either.
 
That was Uncle Neto.
We didn’t understand 
but we loved him. 
 
We loved him standing up
or lying down.
 
And then finally 
only lying down.
 

—from Rattle #76, Summer 2022

__________

Mather Schneider: “I don’t like trying to come up with something clever for these things. I write poetry and prose when there is something I want to put down. I don’t like writing for the hell of it. My favorite desert animal is the javelina, which looks just like a little pig.”

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July 5, 2022

“The Price of Meat” by Mather SchneiderPosted by

Mather Schneider

THE PRICE OF MEAT

Because of the trucker shortage
my book on Stoic philosophy arrived 3 days late
on the same day they found 50 dead immigrants
in a truck outside San Antonio
I rode my bicycle in the heat to the post office
just like I rode it out of Illinois 40 years ago
all the way to Death Valley
and when I got there
they told me I would die if I tried to ride across
so I caught a lift with a guy in a VW bus to Los Angeles
back when people would do nice things like that
at the post office I opened the metal door
reached in my box and was happy to finally have my book
hoping the Stoics could help me deal with adversity
when I got home my wife was crying
she told me about the dead immigrants found baked in that semi truck
my wife who herself walked across the Mexican border
20 years ago
following a coyote sweating through the creosote
(to this day she will not tell me the details of that journey)
we both watched the news
in our little apartment
where the day before we had been complaining about the heat
and the landlord who won’t fix the cooler
and the price of meat
and how the mail never comes on time anymore
and we didn’t know how to make sense of it
those blistered corpses when the metal door was opened
the blinking eyes of the few left alive
after thousands of miles in that God damned oven
we were both so upset we got into an argument
the fifth argument in so many days
until she went into the bedroom and I turned off the tv
and opened my book by Epictetus
who said it is best to maintain an indifferent attitude
toward things you can’t control
even the death of your own child
is part of the divine law
everything arrives the only way it can
and love and happiness are always right there
for the taking
 

—from Poets Respond
July 5, 2022

__________

Mather Schneider: “I think this poem speaks for itself.” (web)

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June 23, 2021

“My Fifteenth Year” by Mather SchneiderPosted by

Mather Schneider

MY FIFTEENTH YEAR

I remember the schools
of dead carp on the riverbank, 

the bonfires, the first booze 
and the first smoke

rolling through me like buffalo.
I remember the novelty 

of let-downs, the tilt 
of my reflection,

which I looked for everywhere. 
I remember the way a friend forgave 

his father and mother,
how we were told to smile 

for pictures, the murder in our eyes
when we were betrayed

or thought we were betrayed,
the stabbing green shoots 

of new emotions. I remember growth spurts 
and how my genitalia 

ruled the timid logic of my brain
like a little general with a red face

and a tight grip. 
I remember snickering at suicides,

rolling my eyes at old age
and at what I considered stupid and banal,

which was almost everything
except the future 

and strange foreign places.
I remember thinking 

the world was mine
and that I would live

as no one ever had lived before, 
and as no one ever would live again.

—from Rattle #71, Spring 2021

__________

Mather Schneider: “Sitting around one day during the quarantine and our ridiculous times, memories of my high school days came back to me, when we hung out on the Illinois River among the washed up dead fish drinking Mad Dog and trying to get laid. The poem came out almost fully formed, as they say, unlike human beings. I remember even back then I thought we were living in an absurd society, reading Camus and ready to tackle the world. Now here I am, 50 years old, wishing I was 15 again.”

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December 19, 2020

“County” by Mather SchneiderPosted by

Mather Schneider

COUNTY

I was in jail for a month.
I was amazed at how much fun
my fellow inmates could have.
Once a week we were marched down to a room
the size of half a basketball court
and ordered to exercise.
There was a basketball backboard
painted on the wall, but no hoop
and no ball. One time
the inmates started playing football
with 20 socks rolled up together
and soon they were having such a good time
that the guards ordered everyone
to surrender their socks.

I remember the stupid, pulpy hatred
on the faces of those guards
as if we were the worst
possible waste of human life.
I wanted to kill them, honestly,
but what bothered me most
was that no one else did.

Instead of getting angry
they just started
playing soccer
with their rubber slippers.

—from Rattle #28, Winter 2007

__________

Mather Schneider: “I don’t like trying to come up with something clever for these things. I write poetry and prose when there is something I want to put down. I don’t like writing for the hell of it. I’m a cab driver here in Tucson. My favorite desert animal is the javelina, which looks just like a little pig.” (webs)

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January 14, 2019

“Suicide Lane” by Mather SchneiderPosted by

Mather Schneider

SUICIDE LANE

Yesterday on Grant Road I got behind a 4Runner SUV, blue-gray, dirty, maybe ten years old. It was going slow in the fast lane. Rush hour. I finally got a gap in the slow lane and put my blinker on to pass it. Then the fucker went into the slow lane right in front of me, blocked me again! Shit fire! All the cars in the fast lane poured through like wasps through a knot-hole. 

In a mile I finally got a gap in the fast lane and jumped back in there and passed the 4Runner. I glanced over: a woman driving, putting her make-up on, smearing it all around her face, oblivious to the chaos around her, blessed with natural blinders. Good Lord Almighty! 

Then today I got on Grant Road again, like a moron, and I swear to God I found myself behind the very SAME 4Runner. Tucson is a city of a million people. An indifferent universe my fat, white, hairy ass! She was again going 10 mph below the limit. When I managed to get past her, I looked over and this time she was eating something out of a paper sack. 

My soul. She was eating my soul. 

She was enjoying it, and would not turn her head to meet my stare.

—from Rattle #61, Fall 2018

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Mather Schneider: “Tucson had the last of its ‘suicide lanes’ eradicated in the early 2000s, but as a cab driver it always seemed somewhat suicidal to even be on the road, as it seems suicidal to partake in almost any part of our civilized system. I am no longer driving a cab but I still have those days and those thoughts that the world is eating me alive, and that the absurdity of life is intensified by the absurdity of human society. Tim said this poem made them laugh, which makes me happy.” (web)

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March 13, 2018

“Hot Iron” by Mather SchneiderPosted by

Mather Schneider

HOT IRON

She uses a flat hot iron
to straighten her hair.
It has a porcelain handle
and burning platypus jaws
and each morning she gets up
and plugs it in the wall.
You can smell it getting hot.
Her hair is a gorgeous blue black
Mexican mane, but her ex
slapped her face
told her she was ugly
and her hair was too curly
every day until it stuck.
It’s a delicate operation:
to change who you are
without burning your scalp.
It’s been eleven years
since she’s seen him, calls
another country home now
but she still gets up
and plugs in that hot iron
every morning. It’s ready
when your spit sizzles.

—from A Bag of Hands
2017 Rattle Chapbook Prize Selection

__________

Mather Schneider: “I don’t like trying to come up with something clever for these things. I write poetry and prose when there is something I want to put down. I don’t like writing for the hell of it. My favorite desert animal is the javelina, which looks just like a little pig.” (web)

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