2 Poems – Steven Schroeder (USA)

Compulsory Military Exercise

Early morning, three
go slow against a sleepy
river of child soldiers
marching to someone’s idea
of a good war. The driver
of a small car honks
at every one as though
he thinks the sound will
make them turn
and say no,

but they flow
like water
around a rock
that has fallen
into the stream,
and he moves on
at the pace they set.

Another, in an SUV, is accustomed to moving
people. But his machine is a boulder
in this river, and slow
is as fast as he can go.

I wade upstream, thinking
poetry, avoiding
collisions, changing

nothing.

Shenzhen, September 2009

***

Dragonflies

After rain, dragonflies
shimmer eye high
over a footbridge,

sprinkle sun
like holy water on
every morning pilgrim.

-

Steven Schroeder is the co-founder, with composer Clarice Assad, of the Virtual Artists Collective (a “virtual” gathering of musicians, poets, and visual artists – vacpoetry.org) that has published five poetry collections each year since it began in 2004. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in After Hours, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Concho River Review, the Cresset, Druskininkai Poetic Fall 2005, Macao Closer, Mid-America Poetry Review, Poetry East, Poetry Macao, Rhino, Shichao, Sichuan Literature, Texas Review, TriQuarterly, Wichita Falls Literature & Art Review, and other literary journals. He has published two chapbooks, Theory of Cats and Revolutionary Patience, and three full-length collections, Fallen Prose, The Imperfection of the Eye, and Six Stops South. A Dim Sum of the Day Before is forthcoming from Ink Brush Press. He teaches at the University of Chicago in Asian Classics and the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults and at Shenzhen University in China.

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