BIGFOOT
Mrs. Robinson had lived
in those Arkansas hills
every one
of her 74 years.
When she was 16
she was frightened half to death
by a large,
mysterious animal print
in the sand by the creek.
She had never seen anything like it
and ran all the way home
to tell her pa.
Later
she felt
silly.
It was nothing but a man
wearing shoes.
BAD SIGN
When my parents were newlyweds
a black snake stretched across
their gravel driveway.
My father stepped on the brake
of their brand new Bronco
and he and my mother sat there
with their mouths agape like
apples cut open—so young,
the future all raw country.
Both the snake’s head and tail
were swallowed in the weeds
and there was a lump
the size of a football
halfway down his body.
My father looked at my mother
and flicked his tongue.
TICKS
The dogs’ fur
hid some big mothers
gray as old meat
so fat we whipped them
against the rocks
like cherry tomatoes.
When we walked away
the dogs snapped at each other
over the blood.
LAND ESCAPIST
He sharpens his spade daily.
The weeds are whiskered deep
into the chins of the Ozarks.
His shoulders razorback brown;
his wet black bangs tattooed
to his forehead like the cannon
on his arm. There he stands
so proud with peacock’s tail
of shovels fanned behind him.
He came to make the land his
own. If sweating was sinning
he’d be the Devil himself.
Mather Schneider is a 40 year old cab driver from Tucson, Arizona. He is happily married to a sexy Mexican woman. His poetry and prose have appeared in the small press since 1993. He has one full length book out by Interior Noise Press called Drought Resistant Strain and another full length coming in the spring of 2011 from New York Quarterly Press.
