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Mike Schneider: Three Hats
Stetson
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 tank 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 made me who I was
becoming & still am. 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 to us from mad King George’s
mercenary Hessians. Almost everyone
I knew growing-up originated in a land
where people Sprechen sie. All this
has more to do with who I am
than I can ever know.
~~
Bowler
When Oddjob flings his bowler
in Goldfinger, it leaps from his hand
& sails like a frisbee across a meadow
& hovers, or seems to, as in a dream
in which the dreamer floats in air —
unbound by gravity, feeling freedom
often taken as desire for the joyfulness
of sex, luxurious, gliding seconds
in which you imagine however briefly
existence as this moment sailing on
& on, as if you were a condor, lifted
on an updraft over the Andes
to surf waves of sky & stay
as long as you like, no hurry, no
worry, no effort, just be there.
But suddenly, as warning
to Bond, Oddjob’s bowler bares
steel teeth & attacks the marble
statue of helmeted Athena, chews
through her neck & lops her head.
Later, in Kundera’s Unbearable
Lightness of Being, the movie,
Lena Olin as Sabina in black lingerie
& her bowler, plum-brown, with Tomás
in her Paris studio — they’re thinking
back to the squeak & clank of plated
steel on cobblestone, tanks & Molotovs,
black smoke, rage & flames, Prague,
Spring ’68. It’s the same bowler
she wore when they made love in tears
amid the violence, her in that hat
from the civilized life of their fathers
& grandfathers & their fathers too.
~~
Sombrero
November 1915
Pancho Villa wasn’t seeking asylum
when he splashed across the Santa
Cruz on horseback with 1,500 men,
criss-crossed bandoliers & carbines
into Nogales, Arizona. Atención
Gringos! said the handbills. For
Gold & Glory Come Ride with Pancho
Villa. A thousand sombreros blunted
the Chihuahua sun & draped shade
on faces that faced death many times.
From Villa’s unbounded grin, inflected
by the coal-black swash of el bigote,
his moustache, laughter roars & you
feel the magnetic thrill of personality
that made starving peasants believe
they’re free. Or could be. A hundred
years later that photo sells tacos.
~~~~~
Poems copyright 2025 Mike Schneider from his collection Many Hats (Poetry Box, 2025). “Stetson” -appeared in Fourth River; “Bowler” in Missouri Review; and “Sombrero” in Painted Bride Quarterly.
Mike Schneider began writing during the Vietnam War when he published an anti-war “underground” newspaper. His poems received The Florida Review 2012 Editors Award and 2016 Robert Phillips Prize from Texas Review Press. His full-length collections are Spring Mills and Friday’s Dance (forthcoming).
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These hats are wonderful, and I love the very idea of them. Most are not happy hats, but they all lead us and must have lead the poet to and through worlds. Congratulations, Mike Scheider, and thanks, Vox!
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Aren’t the hats great?
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Happy to see three of Mike Schneider’s many hats today.
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Hahahaha!
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Wonderful poems — and such a stunning book cover too!
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A master-class in poetic haberdashery.
I have way too much stuff to say in praise of these poems. Won’t fit here. There’s a sense of his wonder to Mike’s work, but also connection to the understanding that we live on the brim of a precipice.
I have two hats: my son’s black pirate hat, my dad’s black Stetson. I choose to put on the pirate hat this morning to salute Mike’s work, and Vox.
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Hahhahhahah. I so look forward to your VP comments every morning, Jim. Thank you.
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Mike’s underlying joie de vivre is contagious to me. His hat poems inspire creativity in response. Thanks, Mike and Michael.
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Jim — you equal Mike’s wit & conciseness with your “A master-class in poetic haberdashery.”
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Thank YOU, Jim!
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I own this fine collection of poems and loved re-reading three os its treasures. Yes, it’s superbly written, yes it’s often delightfully smart & witty, but it has so many layers, so many between-the-lines cultural and political innuendos and/or emotional depth. I love MANY HATS!
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I have his previous chapbook: Elvis Night at Johnny’s, and would recommend it to anyone. Mike crafts his poems well. They also brim with historical, family, and cultural insights. As you say, Laure-Anne, they contain emotional depth and relevant innuendos to the human condition. Sombrero highlights all of those strengths, as does so much of his work. He writes with an intricate beauty, doesn’t he? (much like you)
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Too kind.
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But thanks for the comments.
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I’ve noticed that comments on Vox seem mostly written out of either shared agreements with the essays, or through a cornucopia of kind thoughts and words for the poems, many written by poets, themselves. There is always danger in being too kind, but to me it seems to be the preferred way here in the poetry section for community building, and encouragement. It works well for me. But I also sense an honesty to the kindness. Not an ersatz one, or what we call here Minnesota Nice.
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Given how much cruelty is being enacted in public policy, I don’t think it is possible in this age to be too generous or encouraging.
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Thank you, Laure-Anne — especially for “between-the-lines cultural and political innuendos” . . . .
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