CHARLES SPRINGER - POEMS

Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is published in over seventy journals including The Cincinnati Review, Faultline, Windsor Review, Packingtown Review and Tar River Poetry, among others.  His first collection of poems entitled JUICE has been published by Regal House Publishing. Visit him at https://www.charlesspringer.com. He writes from Pennsylvania.

​FUNNY WEATHER

The iceberg showed up three or four in the morning at the last exit off the turnpike and gradually made its way down Main, slipping and sliding past dogs and cars left out overnight and dogs left in cars overnight and later that afternoon, say between three and four, time took on a new face, I mean, shoppers were taking more of it talking to one another, more of it gazing at unbeatables in shop windows, more of it watching the iceberg become for one moment what appeared to be a cube, although one gazer saw what he thought was a naked lady like he’d once found floating in his highball, even the parking meters were taking their time ticking away while beatcops’ twirling blackjacks were undercutting the second hand on the courthouse clock and then, as if the end of an era, more likely just quitting time, no iceberg, no iceberg anywhere and each cop now walked a dog and let those still in cars, out, and shoppers everywhere rushed home with their treasures and just so you know, Main remains a bit slick and glistening even in July. 

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​STUFFERS

Last year Herman found what appeared to be real human feet cut off just above the ankles in his Christmas stockings tacked to the mantle and found them to be surprisingly happy feet with wiggly toes eager to tickle the ivories and arches hard as marble with the most perfect curves and Herman kept these stocking stuffers active with polonaises on the piano and poses of ancient architectural passageways and had made himself and all of his feet a family but only Herman's own feet danced, only Herman's own feet skipped and kicked balls and mean dogs until they wore out and he became bound to a wheelchair while his stocking stuffer feet had become too high and mighty to get their bottoms dirty pushing him around so Herman knocked them down a peg or two with his fists, then ran them over, forward and reverse, forward and reverse, he ground them into flakes and splinters and with a taken-up-for-the-occasion breath, blew them into the north wind from where he believed they had come.

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V for WINGS
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Man who's been manning the satellite reports he hears geese sounding below like traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike below them, communicable code he hopes some teen idol sci geek is getting down with digits as well as the geese's formations, some iconic Vs, some like standard checkmarks, there was that time a question mark, and some, cautions to the wind, free sails when they're not geese at all but broken-string kites and scratch paper airplanes and origami blue loons whose honks when heard worldly, signal it's time to be geese again for less than a mile up ahead by earth's checkerboard standards, fans in the thousands gather ovally in stadii, honk for their favorite team's victory, only to be eclipsed by the returning touchdowns of wings. 

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​GRAND THEFT

Doe browses the underbrush behind Quick Mart, raises her head, sees a man climb into a Ram and become a wild wooly beast with bright eyes, cloven feet. Doe watches a woman with hair that does not move and big black adjustable eyes step into a sun-streaked Cougar with its hat off, slink into the stampede of traffic. When a cherry-red Impala with turquoise-tinted windshield, chrome-plated grill and white sidewall tires idles at an angle by the ice machine, doe does, doe does what, doe does what she knows, doe does what she knows she has to do, even if it means breaking the law.

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