Yeti Poem
by Stefan Karlsson
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I. The Shiver
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Waiting inside the principal’s office, he tried to find
the right face––smug Dillinger mug, calm Capone aplomb?
Outside, his mom bargained for the soul of her lawless son
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again. Then the word “expulsion” broke into the room,
clobbered his ears, and left him there encased in fear
like Han Solo carbon-frozen. But he wasn’t alone:
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on the wall hung a wood engraving of a glum nun
drooping with Jesus: Angela of Foligno. She too
awaited judgment. Perhaps she didn’t deface pews
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or set Barbie dolls ablaze with aerosol cans, but she too
shivered in God’s perfect shadow, she too polished
sorrows like secret fangs in her cell, so he fancied her
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his wild patron: he was a monster trapped in an ice slab
of trouble and Angela, his guardian gargoyle, mushed a sled
of St. Bernards come to rescue him! As the doorknob
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clicked his childhood shut, he settled on a martyred look.
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II. Icing on the Cake
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On his tenth birthday he unwrapped the Kobe Bryant
action figure he’d begged for. As he ripped the box open
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his dad whipped into a fit: No no no, you’ve killed
its value! It’s supposed to stay in the packaging. So he played
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with his worthless gift guiltily while his dad barked
how the birthday was ruined. He saw his mom put on
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her death mask of wax, nodding, perfectly disguised
as a person alive and listening. He didn’t yet think
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of Saint Angela’s corpse, her incorrupt body on display
like a pharaoh’s slave, mummified, perfectly preserved
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in its museum case. Older now, he sees his mother’s face
looking at him as if through the frozen surface
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of a lake. Was it I who led you to the hole, to this
hopeless split in the ice? Her stare as stiff as a net’s bottom-
less swish…Kobe’s flicked wrist fixed eternally midair.
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III. Ice Breakout
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Grandma lay feeble and furry, her toothless mouth
cavernous. His parents had dragged him on this last
family cave visit to say goodbye to the dying beast.
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“If you don’t pet your grandmother,” dad threatened,
“no video games and no ice cream after dinner
forever.” So he petted away, scowling, his own hair spilling
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through the holes in his jeans. Each aunt, uncle, and cousin
lined up to pat her belly and coo into her ear
who should receive her prized ice crystal jewelry.
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His Gameboy shielded him as the adults, drinking
and chomping ice cubes, bickered over Grandma’s estate.
That night he snuck to the kitchen for more ice cream
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but found Grandma. “How long has the freezer
been open?” his teeth chattered. “We’re bustin’ out
of this joint,” she gummed. “We’ll ride the ice blocks
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down the mountain to Old Jim’s ranch, steal a couple horses,
and hightail it to the city.” Her eyes flared for some
cryptid sibling long buried in the family crypt. “Brother?”
she said. “Yes, Grandma?” “What big teeth you have…”
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IV. The Incorruptible
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Who is watching him as he sits stoned
still on the couch, TV gangster legends engraving
his dreams with their crimes?
Thinking his mind is cut
to the likes of Legs Diamond, he feels eyes,
their eyes, like ice picks trying to spike his skull,
the way Everest climbers feel the yeti’s ruby-eyed gaze
as they fall. He had so much potential,
they all said. But they couldn’t see
his was the potential energy
of a guillotine’s high-hanging blade. He almost smiles
as he recalls raining terror on his friends––
Ah, the great snowball battle of ‘98.
He remembers nailing––was it Jack?
Was the name Jack Ruby? It’s slushy in his head,
as if carved into a melting glacier. This stuff
makes his memory as tangled as yeti fur,
makes him feel as if the fuzz
is always closing in, makes him believe
the impossible: I’m as innocent
as a saint! But even saints
must be corruptible––how else to measure
our fall? No, he didn’t cast the first snowball
at all. It’s getting clearer now, how the others turned
on him, blasted him square in the eye, how the snow
fell from his face, stone-
cold as the saintly sneer of Robespierre
when his head dropped into the bucket.
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V. His Ice Age
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One night his dad decided he was too old
to be tucked in so under the bed he crawled
into the cave-dark to wonder at his dad’s old
shaved yeti centerfolds, but as he hunted deeper
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into crumpled report card tundra, past his so-called
snow globe collection (abandoned: whole worlds
toppled and cracked open like tossed skulls
in caved-in catacombs), he heard the call––
or rather the weak coo of his own voice
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coming from a man who lay stiff, soul case
grown to full yetihood, with monstrous eyes
(red like his own) whose secrets wouldn’t let
them shut. Not even a whisper of this, they said.
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And in that look he understood and found solace
that the yeti remained at large before the world
froze over because it hid from itself; and he saw
that its footprints in the snow led to a home
with a mom and dad fighting the cold
that grew between them, that the evidence
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for people’s natural goodness was so loose
it could avalanche at any moment, that even
a whisper could without warning dislodge
frostbitten loved ones from the cabin
heart, plunge them into some icy abyss;
and he saw why fools once called the peaceful
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yeti a beast, savage and soulless,
because the mere existence of a spirit so fiercely
unsolvable is a source of terror to cities so smallsouled
they fit snug in a snow globe
stuffed under a boy’s bed. The man closes
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his eyes as sleep approaches fur-soled, its
claws like stolen rubies clacking dimly
on cold tile––as mom’s heels once did
in the hallway. He has not quite crossed
the crevasse––or has he?––into dream
when a boy who shares his face lies face-up
beside him like a fossil in a solid block of ice.
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Artist Statement:
“Yeti Poem” is a multimedia project about youth and identity, guilt and freedom. Like a bildungsroman in verse, the piece traces the development of a young person in search of meaning and belonging in a nightmarish, increasingly cold and inhospitable landscape. While the poem is set in familiar scenes of adolescent rebellion, family gatherings, and domestic conflict; it adopts a surrealist logic, embracing wild juxtapositions to render the difficult experience of piecing together one’s sense of self in opposition to arbitrary authority (whether parental, scholastic, societal, etc.). The voice of the poem finds solace and security in stories, drawing from tales of folkloric monsters and fairy tale tricksters, legends of Catholic hagiography, accounts of revolutionary and criminal figures, and the endless stream of pop culture’s heroes and villains. Out of such eclectic references, the project embraces the anarchic and creates an alternative world imagined with compassion for those deemed outsiders.
The digital visuals, pieced together using Google’s DeepDream vision program and Google SketchUp’s vast library of 3D models, extend the poem’s world-building, while the soundtrack, remixed from ice levels of classic video games, immerses the viewer in the open-world expansiveness of a dream. Here, the virtual dreamscape evokes a child’s sandbox: an open, if lonely, space to test the boundaries of what is (and what is not) allowed. As a writer and maker, I’m drawn to surrealist techniques and fantastical imagery for their imagination-expanding potential: powerful tools for building an inclusive world. While this piece reveals its cold truths gradually, I hope viewers will feel energized and empowered by its yeti’s-eye view into reality.
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Stefan Karlsson received his MFA in Poetry from the University of California—Irvine. His work has appeared in Forklift Ohio, Tar River Poetry, and Spillway.
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