TWO POEMS by CASEY SCHREINER
Cover Letter for a Job I Will Never Get
To whom it should concern:
I have emerged Promethean from the great gray east, sand-soaked snow in every stormdrain, to stand in the sun meeting your razor ranch wires with iron shears and wildflower bombs.
I am interested in this position: supine, staring at clouds.
Experience? With every footprint I leave behind me, vines emerge to form lost men who look back, look back and wither and forget all that was ever learned.
I am proud to report no proficiency in PowerPoint, but I can decipher petroglyphs, pull the Milky Way from the night sky, stand still in the confluence of flowing rivers, and rise to the patterns of nearby noble firs.
Where do I see myself in five years? My forearms deep in soil, eyes tracking each burning sunset, blasting locked gates open with a whispered word that only I know, and a proud participant of your matching retirement plan.
Hopefully alive, hopefully responded to, hopefully, finally,
Best,
ACTIVE/PASSIVE
A red line strikes a word
away, ‘ACTIVE’ above
in capital letters.
We should know who
the actor is and what
they are acting upon.
But some actors
abhor the stage
and so much is said
in what is not said
so “he kissed me”
becomes “I was kissed”
and my eyes still scan a crowd
before I hold my husband’s hand.
Casey Schreiner is a queer poet who has previously been a television writer / producer, author, outdoor journalist, speechwriter, and host. He has written for Mountaineers Books, Chronicle Books, the Los Angeles Times, Nickelodeon, TruTV, enormous electronics corporations and several beloved but defunct cable networks. He returned to poetry after a short twenty-year break, and studies at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland, Oregon. He has been accepted into the Bread Loaf and Napa Valley Writers Conferences and has work forthcoming in Whale Road Review.