Steven D Schroeder

The March Crosses Another Hard Place

Roads and streambeds and wheat fields are all salt,
scrap metal and propaganda. The pamphlets demand

why try again when this is hopeless? For company,
only uninterruptable hungry sun and vulture croaks

coming encrusted from human throats. For comfort,
handfuls of gravel and grind the frontrunners pretend

are leadership and wisdom. Oh so many tiny apathies
as each keep-up, keep-up footstep grows heavier

over mattress outlet billboard remnants, soft and sweet
pieces of SLEEP and EASY and FALL. The best end

is not yet. Forward from three sorts of burning
toward reports of at least four more, through haze

that would take a shovel to clear, ahead who knows
how far, a mountaintop. How steep flatlands can be.

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Steven D Schroeder's second book, The Royal Nonesuch (Spark Wheel Press), won the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award from Southern Illinois University. His poetry is recently available in Copper Nickel, DIAGRAM and Sixth Finch. He works as a creative content manager for a financial marketing agency in St. Louis.