Stetson

BY MIKE SCHNEIDER

for Melvin “Snip” Snyder

A gunslinger, if topped

by a rolled-brim white Stetson,

stands for justice — the code

was that simple. We were

the good guys. We won

the war. I was older brother, three

of us making trouble for Dad

& Mom, whose life was us. He’d

fought & killed for that. Driving

a Sherman over the Rhine at Bad

Godesburg, he eyed the high slopes

of evergreen darkness & many-spired

castles & veered south to waltz —

not quite — across the Blue

Danube & clank toward Munich,

deep into the land of wiener

schnitzel & striped pajamas. 1945,

he turned 18 that October. I grew up

incomprehending how all-the-way

violence engendered me. My first

therapist wanted me to see my Daddy

as a demon because he’d called me

dummkopf— dumbhead in Pennsylvania

Deutsch, old high-German dialect

that came down to us from King George’s

Hessians. Almost everyone I knew

as a kid originated in a land

where people Sprechen sie. All this

has more to do with who I am

than I can ever know.

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Mike Schneider has published poems in many journals, including New Ohio Review, Notre Dame Review, and Poetry. Three times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, he received the 2012 Editors Award in Poetry from The Florida Review, and in 2016 the Robert Phillips Prize from Texas Review Press.