UNDERGROUND VOICES MAGAZINE/MATHER SCHNEIDER


	UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY

MATHER SCHNEIDER

The Fence

There’s a low whine-growl
of an animal intent,
the crunch of chewed edge
and cracks like broken
bones, the paw and thump of
earth, the shake and splinter
of fence-board stabbing jowly gums
flapping pink as worm-belly.
A single canine flashes like a diamond
in the sun
and then a fore-paw
like a mole’s blind head
and then its brother
churning like pistons.
Then the whole head is there,
smiling dog-face obsessed and deranged
with a single idea,
slimy like a demon struggling
to be born.
When he finally squeezes through his mouse hole
he stands up and shakes himself off
and trots around the parking lot
that is the other side of the world.
It’s no paradise
only a paved place
of strange smells and hostile sounds
and after an hour fighting
to get here
five minutes is all he needs
before he returns to the hole and squirms
back to the familiar.
There are several similar holes in the fence
where history has repeated
and the owner
has bellowed and
kicked
and nailed wooden crosses
over them.

We Are

a smoldering of the oldest symbol
and every morning the alarm goes off
and we get up and do it again
and the sad and beaten sit
in church on Sundays
crying like cats at
the doorways of strangers.

Some people live too long
and others die on the cross
and morality is the last hieroglyph
on the last hill.

I want to be aroused
in the hour of no cities,
placental flame gulping
raw chocolate darkness,
eyes staring into it
like animals
on the precipice of insight,

a strange hot wind
in my face.

Mather Schneider is a 39 year old unemployed
cab driver living in Tucson with a Mexican
girl. He has no college degree and has won
no awards. He has a full length book coming
out by Interior Noise Press.