-Joe & Rosie-

1.

uncle Joe’s

advice to me was:

concentrate on the fenders,

the sculpted

sheetmetal where

the focus of the beauty lay ––

the translucent glazing of the black,

the deep

black-lacquered paint of his Cadillac.

"the broads don’t see themselves
reflected from the lid of the trunk", he'd say.

Joe said:

"concentrate on the fenders".

Joe was the youngest

of my father’s two brothers,

the youngest

and most intriguing of the three.

he was active in the goings on at the downtown barrooms, 
wasn’t married, had no children, no house to speak of,
and smoked kingsize menthol cigarettes at such a pace

it led one to believe he looked forward to the diagnosis.

he cursed fluently in four languages,
two of which had to be inventions, but

Joe had a snazzy late model Cadillac

and a sidekick named "Rosie"— his fabulous girlfriend.

2.
Rosie had long, red

(toward the tincture of orange) hair

ending loosely in curls which on the run bobbed
like springs of filament barely clinging to a mechanism.

on this early afternoon at the start of the "Season"–– the windy
material of her dress seemed sewn by the labor of two
personal silkworms.

I finished the buffing with one last swipe
as Rosie smiled on the approach from the stairs of the porch,

and submitting a proof, she leaned deeply

into the passenger-side fender's glossy reflection,

pushing her sprung-red curls over her shoulder

with a flick of the back of her hand and said: "okay, Joe. let's go".

3.
I settled into the overpowering
backseat of the Cadillac as Joe conned the mighty beauty
into the hesitance of respectful traffic.

on the way, he and Rosie spoke quietly of matters which
had nothing to do with me or my basic understanding of such things.

but in less than ten minutes

the great Cadillac, the buffed black

jewel of the "spindle-city" streets, pulled-up to the curbstone
in front of my father's house alongside the sewer which ate foul balls,

and I crossed the street to the ballgame at Columbus Park,
Clippers v. Bombers, with the score at the top of the 6th
knotted at two-a-side.

                                                      Quequechan, c.1953