-baseball: the psalm-

true confessions of a left fielder 

Rose, 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