Michael Steffen

Word Problem

I trusted language to lead me to a solution, but somehow it fell short, and I never got why my teacher would let an eleventh grade math test car travel 144 mph in the first place, zipping past a police cruiser tucked behind a billboard on which I'd visualized a giant bottle of Smirnoff, and beneath it in 12-point type: DRINK RESPONSIBLY. Two seconds later, the cop hit the road accelerating at 3.0 mps squared. I had to compute how long it would take him to catch a punk resembling me in a Black Sabbath tee-shirt, needle tracks on his arms, cigarette dangling, a poster boy for everything the priests in my Catholic high school were trying to teach me not to be. To whom, or from whom was my dark twin speeding, in what souped-up pony car, and how, I thought, could I get the pink slip to a similar set of wheels? I imagined, in another problem, the egg and the chicken lying the same distance from each other. In another, I solved theta before the clock’s hands concluded their slow swivel and left me with time. I imagined he was my prodigal brother, and the cop would never catch him. I imagined it was raining.

A Good Life

No one lives in the streets and alleys you wander,
a moonlit graveyard defining your dream,
no comfort in the wind outside,
in the bending of the black trees, no way out
of the corpulent darkness. You wake,
and the dead are still dead.
You think about not showering,
but you shower. Maybe it's enough
to imagine the humdrum tasks of the day
lining up like troops at reveille.
Later, you'll mix a drink,
write a few lines, waver between the sadness
and euphoria of silence.
You were once in love. She tried to change you,
the nothing you could think of to say.
And now she's here,
a splinter beneath your thumbnail,
chipping away at conversation
when all you want is a quiet chance.
You pick up your pen and begin to write.
On paper, it's a good life.

Michael Steffen's first book, No Good at Sea, was published by Legible Press in 2002. His second, Premature Gods, is forthcoming from Pecan Grove Press. Michael has had manuscripts shortlisted for the Blue Light Press, Defined Providence Press, and Bright Hills Press Book Awards, as well as the Brittingham and Pollak, Bordighera, and Levine Poetry Prizes. In 2002, he was granted a Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poems and critical prose have appeared in a wide variety of journals including Poetry, Potomac Review, The Ledge, Poet Lore, Rhino, Alehouse and many others. Michael is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Vermont College. He currently resides in Roseto, Pennsylvania. Visit his website at: http://www.geocities.com/msteff12000/MikeSteffen.html