-in the heat of the game-

A woman is driving a Dump-Truck

Down Bedford across from the park

Where we are heavily engaged
In a field-game of Peggyball.

Our team is challenged from a deep strike

By the team headed by Frankie Santos

Who lives on Haffords Street,

And Lionel Morais, our designated “Leaper” is readied

To take-up the challenge.

A Peggyball is formed of hard wood,

Painted bright red,

Is a little smaller than a golfball,

Is smooth all around,

With a flat-spot planed to prevent rolling

When placed on the lever over the fulcrum

To be tapped. The gracefully ascending  

Peggy is hit at the apex of flight with broomsticks
Sawed away from their working heads.

The opposing team is then challenged

To choose a Strider to reach the ball in as few

Leaps as possible.

The logistics in choosing the “number of strides”

Is complex.

This is not the place for a reading of the rules.

The woman driving the Dumpster is seen

Only by me as I walk to the chain-link fence

Separating traffic-fast Bedford Street

And Columbus Park in order to grab my stick.

We all had our own, mined secretly

From the kitchen closets.

After the necessary surgery,
Some sticks are wrapped at the base
In electrical tape for a better grip,

While some of us like the feel of the wood.

It’s Saturday morning and I’m curious about her

Because it’s 1953 and it seems out of place 

For a woman to be driving a Dump-Truck 
Through the city.

But before I can turn to tell my friends

Of this rare sighting,

Lionel is already striding long and fast

Through the dirt of the infield to the Peggy

Laying in the sunlight

Of the centerfield grass a good 300 feet away.

Take everything you know about beauty and effort;—

Take all you know of desire and passion,

And that’s the image of Lionel,

Striding long-legged to reach a Peggyball
In the heat of a game

Across a kid-saturated Columbus Park

In the face of a challenge

By the kids who belong

To a Park that was somewhere else.

The woman driving the Dumpster is no longer in sight

And the sound of the game is screaming at my back.

I have the stick of my own making in the grip of my hands,—

And Lionel Morais, with our neighborhood on his shoulders
Is leaping in a cloud of dust toward the Peggy.

          

                                                    Quequechan










  

-looking to the dandelions-

the piss-in-beds

nod yellow-headed this morning

and the slivers of their petals,
light of the early flower,

the bloom of the weed, fall fast.

october drives on its avenues,

looks impatiently for its overcoat.

this is happening on the east-

side patch of lawn near the porch.

the furniture’s been folded
and put in the basement.

inside where the dandelions are ignored

the light moves carefully and october

relaxes its fist.


late afternoon brings a lazy rain
deepening grey values of the rooftops,
tapping the sidewalks, drenching the grass
where the piss-in-beds drink.

                               10/7/11

-straight-edged-

it happened years ago.

so long ago.

once upon a time ago.
a job to be done,

the Artist is a painter of advertising signs.

signs to buy this thing and eat over here.

drive this way and put your dough

in our capable hands.
we’ll treat you right,

like a neighbor and friend,

we’re hear for you open nights ‘till 9.

the friendly bank.

the laughing bank.

don’t let us down.

we’re the Pancake House with whipped-

cream n’ strawberries poured all over ‘em,

serving all your route 6
pancake needs for fifteen years. sign says:
we're China Seas, plenty msg to fill you up.

eat at Zeaks, but the smell

of counter Joe’s pits’ll drive you to the street,

and it’s out on the street where the sign-painter

bolts ‘em up,— high over his head for all to see.

drive by and see the the signs the Artist paints,

he’s painted them for all to see.

colored, global positioning devices locked on the land,

give directions for everyone

to get to everyplace he paints on the signs,

bolting them high above his head

with strength and effort to send the people
happily on their way.

but the pretty young women look-up at his signs,

signs with big letters and small ones too,

the truth and not so much the truth,

and the pretty young women

gather at the ladder, the message be damned,

look-up at his signs, and he flexes his muscles
at just the right time,

the way all the working sign-painters did,

the same way the Artist has done this day.

                                                11/8/11

-Ragonesi’s house-

Off Linden, the craggy dead-end

Found Ragonesi’s house.

Rags lived with his mother.

We never asked him about his father,

The circumstance remembered as being

Out of life’s character,

In that families stayed together ‘till death did they part.

So maybe he died.
We assumed his father had died.

Maybe this house stands as testament

To something not finished; not realized;—

The house whose living architecture is incomplete.

Maybe. I don’t know.

Ragonesi’s house was half a house.

It was built that way.

Take a small, old two-decker.

Saw the thing down the middle,
Save the side with the toilet,
Put the wall back up

And sit it down on a short spit of gravel

Peppered with snapping weeds.

This is Ragonesi’s house.

Half a house on half a street.

Half a family.

“Chico” Johnson had a new 1959

Ford Custom 300, six-cylinder

Four-door sedan, light blue, three-

Speed stick-shift on the column

And when we piled into it, six or seven guys

Were screaming “Shotgun!”

Except for Rags.

Albert Ragonesi liked sitting

In the back seat.

Back there, it’s every man for himself.

We'd drive to Sambo’s Diner on Pleasant

Where the fast cars congregated and revved-up menacingly,

Daring to be challenged.

The Custom 300 was understandably ignored,

Tucked innocently behind the metallic screams
Of four-barrel carbs,

Fuel injectors, and Ram-inductors.

It was all about getting a lot of gasoline fast to the pistons.

But Albert's mother shuffled slowly across the linoleum

Of half a kitchen in half a house on half a street,

Preparing a platter of Oreo cookies
Late at night when the Diners closed because she knew
We’d be on our way to Ragonesi's house.

                                                  Quequechan

-Sun-

The Sun will explode in five billion years

But I’ll be very old and ready to go.

I'm looking into a more stable environment for the dog

Get him out of the city before it's too late

Maybe a quiet cattle ranch in southwestern

Oklahoma where rumor has it that the Sun

Allows for certain exceptions to its inevitable end.

He can run around chasing the old pickups

Delivering farm-fresh vegetables,

Spare parts for a neighbor's cranky machinery,

And the doomed, crate-stuffed chickens
Traveling fast in the dust 

Along with the breakfast eggs they made.

The dryness of the narrow roads

Link the small distant farms with a frayed hand,

Dry planet to dry planet. Murmur of bloated tires

And the muted, throaty calls of four-

Legged animals in late afternoon are the tread-worn hymns —
The songs of rural America, lucky dog.

The luckiest chickens are the few who get to stick their beaks

Between the wire-looped slats to the rushing air for one last breath.

When the cool-blue Moon rolls over the silos everything moves

To the front porch and to stillness.

Songs of vibrating crickets harmonize with the slow

Creaking wood of the rockers under infinite skies.

Dog sleeps at their feet in southwestern Oklahoma.

As for me, I’ll be very old when the Sun explodes.

writ in 2011

                                                 

-video lips-

If it’s too beautiful you can’t hear the song.

the rhymes are good and fit neatly at the ends—

but it’s the mouth that carries everything.

she should get out of the sun,

go to the landfill where the seagulls eat.

she should rub her hand over sandpaper

for the experience.

the bird dressed like Marilyn on an off-night

who’s drunk and falls on her ass

walking to the premiere of something made a good start.

if it’s too beautiful you can’t hear the song.

                                for lana del rey

-before even the Moon-

When we ran out of nails
We used some Carpenter’s glue
Yellowing-stiff with age

I found on a dusty shelf in the cellar 

On a weathered flat of corrugated
To frame an opening.

The deeper problem of converting the Evinrude

Outboard with the rust-covered housing

To work somewhat harder than it ever did

When my Uncle Frank used it 

To power the peeling twelve-foot smack

Over the lillie-padded

Still water of Fog-Land, was overcome 

By the confidence I maintained 

In the mission.

I’m going to shoot this baby to the Moon with me in it,

And Buddy Woycehowski's going to help me do it.

The uncle was long dead. 

But his brother, nearly a stranger,
Thought I was crazy.

He kept asking me how I came to have the Evinrude,

Which he thought should have gone to him
After Uncle Frank's passing.

I promised he could have it
When I returned from the frozen

Stone of the Moon.

Sunset on the horizon dropped fast 

On the junkyard, laying in waste

Behind the backyard, painting the rust-

Headed wrecks

In covers of their own patina;—

The incandescent 

Street lights turned on

And the kids were leaving the parks.
So I climbed in.

Buddy Woycehowski readied the cherry-bombs

For a loud ignition and lift-off,

As I screamed the countdown to blastoff.

This will make my name.

Sundown found

My father confiscating the cherry-bombs

From Buddy Woycehowski.

My uncle’s brother, the guy I hardly knew,
was awarded the Evinrude on the spot

Which he never came to claim.

I stumbled from the Pod

As my Grandfather stumbled up the stairs

Dank from the cradle of the cellar asking if anyone 

Had seen his glue.

My Mother shouted us to dinner from the open

First-floor window at the clothesline's pulley—

With an invitation to join us

Extended to Buddy Woycehowski.

                                              Quequechan    

-pardon me, girl...

Faith Ventura was nine years old,—

a city ragamuffin

with the look of a dusty angel,

her cropped blonde hair stuck to her face.

a smile's a hook to reel them in

working the barrooms, double-timing
in and out of the bus station,

in and out of the train station,

she studied the schedules,

nodding on the platforms,

knocking on the windows

from taxi to taxi,

setting-up outside the theaters,

setting-up outside the public
toilets of Providence

and when the urinals stunk-up the avenue

and the businessmen walked-up
to the streets in their suits

she’d be there to shine the piss from their shoes.

a smile's a hook to reel them in.

                                    for Faith Ventura Humes

-Sandra-

the first and only time I was told

to bring the clothes in from the line

I noticed the wooden clothespins

were topped with nubs

their legs slightly open
the tips
gracefully tapered outward to accommodate
the fold of the wash on the rope.


the girls wore dresses
at the Hugo A. Dubuque School
and whatever the social circumstance,—

School, Catechism, the Wakes of their Aunts,
Saturday afternoons at the Strand,—

when they sat down in dresses their legs

opened slightly to light,
more warmly than clothespins,—
something of movement they'd soon
become conscious of.


Sandra would do this too

and like her friends
she did it without an intent to attract attention,
staying within her own attitude of attendance.
she lived on Tobin Street
a few blocks from my house.

nothing sounds like the parched

screeching of the clothesline pulley
as the rope is hauled inward toward the window.
what the christ did leukemia have to do with her?

the sheets air-dried on the line.
skin of her parentage, the light
of the Ponta Delgada.




                                    Quequechan