-baseball: the psalm-

true confessions of a left fielder 

Rose Giambastino Pieroni, my maternal grandmother

tried in vain to push right-handedness into me.

there were times when after school, after supper,

after I flushed the toilet, after being admonished
to go back and flush the toilet she’d grab my arm,

lead me to the kitchen table, slap a sheet of paper in front of me

and wriggle a pencil into my right hand, the "hand of God", she said.

It seemed I was possessed with the hand existing on the other

side of righteousness, the Devil’s own hand!

Rose didn’t speak english broken or otherwise

let alone write in english, but what she did do with biblical authority,

was to cup her hand (deep-purple veins, blood-bloated

under a glazing, translucent veneer of skin) over my right hand

which held the captive pencil, moving it aggressively across the sheet

in heavy, haphazard scribblings and although her tenacity to exorcise

demons didn't take, I'll romanticize herein that she foresaw, that without

this transformation I’d be forever confined to the loneliness of the outfield plain,

or please, God, no!...first base.


Quequechan, 1951, 1951?, 1952