Mather Schneider

My Dad's First And Last Apartment

When my dad split with my mom
for the final time
he got an apartment in Bartonville
in a worn-out Victorian house.
It was on the second floor and had big
vertical windows
and a view of a couple of different streets.
I was 15 and I went to visit him
in his new apartment
and I thought it was the greatest thing.
Growing up we always lived
in some trailer or dilapidated house out
in the middle of nowhere.
My dad’s new apartment had hardly any furniture,
a bed and one chair by a table
by the window with his old
typewriter sitting on it.
No nick knacks,
one piece of soap in the john
and nothing in the refrigerator
but beer and hot dogs.
He also had a shelf full of books.
They were the same books he’d had
all the years before
but for some reason they seemed different
and I began
to read them.
I really thought life
was opening.
I felt I was in some Saroyan
or Carver story 
and I pictured my dad
in that chair by the window
writing about his life
with mom and maybe
writing about the time before that
which I knew hardly anything about.
And I was thinking he'd have
a few girlfriends—
the girls at my school always said he was cute—
and write about those too,
and live a loose and
easy life.
I was proud of my dad,
he finally made a change,
as if he had warded off something.

But three months later
he met a gal at the Save-A-Lot on Lafayette
and moved into her double wide trailer
in the desolate river bottoms
over by Kingston Mines.

For years afterwards
I looked up at his old apartment window
whenever I drove past
until I got my hick ass out
of Illinois
and learned how hard it is to find
a place of your own 
to sit down
and be satisfied.

Suegro’s Tour

Suegro didn’t die gracefully.
He made a big damn show of it,
squalling at Suegra from his deathbed in the house,
calling her a crazy old lady,
a fucking bitch,
getting even for all the things that pissed him off his whole life,
telling her to come in and help him go to the bathroom.
He would fall to the floor on purpose
and wipe shit all over the walls.
He would go into the kitchen and yell from the window:
THEY’RE KEEPING ME PRISONER!
SOMEBODY HELP ME!
The neighbors would come.
Once the police came too.
Suegra had to explain.

Poor old Suegro.
He was a sweet man when he was healthy
but dying, no.

During his last years he always talked about taking a tour of Mexico.
He hadn’t been anywhere in his whole life,
just that same dirty barrio
but he had seen in a magazine
they had tour busses that would take people
around Mexico to visit the famous sites,
the Aztec ruins,
the “magical pueblos”
the tequila breweries.
He wanted that tour so bad
but it cost too much.

He finally died in midsummer
when it was hot as fuck.
The funeral was in a church so he could go to heaven.
That funeral probably cost more than the bus tour
but somehow they always find money for funerals,
funerals and beer.

After the ceremony
we all got in the procession to head to the cemetery.
The hearse was in front and kept making odd turns.
I said to Natalia,
Isn’t the cemetery on Progresso?
She just shushed me and we followed.

The hearse ended up going all over the place,
through neighborhoods I didn’t even know existed.
We skirted the reservoir, snuck past the prison
and wound through the rich part
on the north side.
The kid driving the hearse
didn’t know where he was going
and was drunk.
Finally some fed-up uncle got out of his car at a red light
and set the punk straight.

We pulled into the cemetery as the sun was setting.
In this way old Suegro finally got his tour.
Now he’s seeing places we can only imagine
and he can’t even send us a postcard.

Relations

After he got done looking into Natalia’s vagina
the doctor said we can’t have relations for a while
which was funny because we haven’t made
love in over two years
and our relation is that of a couple of strangers
stranded on an iceberg.
He wrote out three new prescriptions.
Unlike most doctors,
he had beautiful handwriting
but he spelled her name wrong.
Life takes on a repeat.
I said life takes on a repeat.
I write my own prescriptions
which I call poems.
Only Death will fill them.

 

Mather Schneider was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1970. He has several books available and his chapbook, Much More Than Time recently won the Slipstream poetry chapbook contest. His new book of short stories, Port Awful, will also be out soon by Anxiety Press. He divides his time between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico and works as an exterminator.