Removing the Self by Steve Klepetar

“How to remove oneself from oneself

(without unknowing oneself totally):

                Neruda

I remove myself from myself

one shadow at a time. I pull and

a curtain of cloud fills the room.

By now, something is leaking,

a blue tarpaulin flaps in the breeze.

My eyes have faded from white

to yellow to red, and then to ash.

I have burned myself in the furnace

of my fears, baked in the oven

of desire until steam rises from

my skull and the hungry eaters,

called to table from an upper

floor, descend to their plates

and bowls and forks and knives.

I disappear down a hundred throats

and my sighs are lost in the green wind.

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto  and The Li Bo Poems (forthcoming) both from Flutter Press.