One Poem by Mather Schneider

Normal 

I haven’t talked to Natalia in 3 days.

We had another fight.

I’ve been sleeping in the room out back

and drinking like a hole in the ground.

It’s 2 p.m. and I hear a knock on the door

right in the middle of a dream where all my hair was falling out

and spiders were crawling out of my veins.

Natalia says, 

The guy’s here to fix the water pump.

We’ve been waiting for a week for him to show up.

they never call first. 

I spend too much time reading Emerson’s “Self Reliance” 

to learn to fix anything.

I get dressed and go outside.

It’s sunny and a bit warmer. 

Natalia and I stand and watch him dismantle the water pump,

40-ish Mexican man with his son learning the trade

handing him tools.

He smiles and says, 

You need a new tank and a new hose,

I’ll go get the materials,

and you’ll be back to normal in no time.

Gracias, I say.

We watch them drive off in his old truck.

Probably the same truck his father used.

I put my arm around Natalia

but she twists away and goes inside.

I stand there next to the pieces of the water pump

laid out on the cracked concrete,

wondering how much it’s all going to cost.

 

 

Bio: Mather Schneider was born in 1970 in Peoria, Illinois. He attended several colleges but never attained a degree. After living in Washington State for eight years, he moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1997 where he married a Mexican woman and began travelling to Mexico. He has worked many jobs and now drives a taxi. He has had several hundred poems and stories published since 1994 in places such as River Styx, Rattle, Nimrod, Hanging Loose, Rosebud, Pank and New York Quarterly.