3 Poems

By Mather Schneider

TO MAKE THE TIME GO FASTER

Been busy? he asks while I’m spraying his Cyprus
that sparkles with wasps. Yes, I say. That’s good,

he says, it makes the time go faster. I don’t turn
the power hose and spray my bug killer

in his face and tell him No it doesn’t you
fucking imbecile, and even if it did why

would I want time to go faster? Time goes
too fast anyway and I’m not in sixth grade staring

at the minute hand on the wall like it might jump
forward so I can go out to play or fixating

on the X on the calendar wishing Santa
would hurry up and get here. No, I’m 56-years-old

and every day my back hurts worse and my
hair is grayer and my eyes are heavier as I peer

into the mirror where death smirks back, the rear-
view from my 17-year-old truck as dented

as I am, as I go from house to house in the opulent
suburbs and spray rich pricks’ yards to kill

the icky bugs, bugs that only live a few days
and do you think they want time to go faster?

What soulless reptile can’t feel the sublime pull
of it all slipping away each moment

and see in every dried-out husk and feet-up beetle
his own rotting corpse? This pot-bellied tool made it

to 65 so he could retire and spend his days
waiting for the mail or the bug man or watching

game shows or doing cross-words or cowering
from paper wasps when he goes out to hose

down his white-as-a-salt-flat driveway, this man
already dead, who has every useless luxury

at his fingertips and a lobotomized gaze
as he tells me being busy makes the time go faster

and that’s a good thing, sure, that’s a good thing.
Instead, I just say, Yeah, I guess, and roll

my hose onto its spool and get in my truck and look
at the dash clock which has been 6 hours

slow for several years and wonder
for the thousandth time how to fix it.

DON’T OVERTHINK IT

For some reason they hire me at the co-op
and I know this is a mistake. They have me peeling eggs

for the first few hours. I peel hundreds of eggs
standing at a conveyer belt with another guy. I hold up an egg

with an electrical plug coming out of it like a tail. What’s this
plug into? I ask the guy. Don’t overthink it, he says.

I go outside to smoke on my break. On the ground are rocks
with names on them of all the employees. Each employee

has their own rock, like a graveyard. I don’t know what to do
next and ask my boss. Just take it easy, he says, this isn’t

prison. Still, I can’t go home. I keep thinking about a poem
I’ve written that is very long and I think very good, perhaps

even revolutionary. It’s out in the mail and when it gets
recognized I will quit the co-op and never have to work again.

I hear a gunshot out the window, then sirens, then the employees
fluttering and squawking like chickens. I wake up

to a sore back, sleeping on my wrong side again, wondering
where the Zen went. I’m too old to have pride, too old

not to. I get up to make coffee. It’s my Friday. What will I do
after work? Drink, probably, until it’s all an illusion.

Another day ahead of me, hiding behind my tongue,
hunting scorpions, spreading poison, thinking of all the dead

masters in the books I’ve read.

SHINGLES

He moans and groans and tells me
the shingles on his back are killing him
as I spray his house for bugs,
a house with an unfinished floor, drafty
as a chicken coop and the news always on
with the sound low.
Middle-aged white guy, like me,
works at an auto parts store, is a little
fat, had a dog but it died
since the last time I was here. I’m sorry, I say,
careful not to spray the dish
still in the corner. I know the ants
will come for the crumbs
but I don’t scold him.
His uniform lays flat on his bed
like his mom set it out for him
and another bedroom empty
as a robbed-out tomb. He’s not going to make it
to work today. No matter what I do,
he’s always got spiders
and There’s too much shit
in the garage to even bother, one day
I’ll get it straightened out.
He smiles and even tips me
10 bucks when I leave, which feels
like an escape.
If you’ve had chicken pox,
you’re probably going to get shingles.
Seems like everybody gets it eventually.
In my truck I crank the air conditioner, put my hat down
on the passenger seat
over a book called Instant Zen
which I’ve barely cracked in six months.
What is the matter with me?
I think
and begin to scratch myself
all over
as if I’m growing feathers.

Mather Schneider divides his time between Tucson, Arizona and northern Mexico. He has several books available, including the recently released Port Awful by Anxiety Press. He works as an exterminator.