Tom Sheehan

APT AT DIRECTIONS

                                   

His new Rawlings glove,

dark as rustled hide, lies boned

and contorted into position, locked

 

about a ball, inner tube

slices like a pipewrapper work

wound about it sure as trainer's tape.

 

It wears some Atlantic

in it yet, sifted here up the Saugus

River at high tide.  He pailed it home

 

from the reedy bank

like a colonist hurrying to fire,

knowing what the ocean's mouth's at.

 

The salt, he says, holds

in it late in a great game a sure

double in the hole he comes up with.

 

The inner tube came off a '55 Chevy

his uncle put 98,000 miles on looking

for a home run, a big hit in the minors,

 

a sunspot.  Now it squeezes

the Atlantic into the Rawlings,

grasping at double-play balls, hot singles.

 

 

GENERATION GAP

(Before the trade, streak stopped.)

             

Wade Boggs finally sinned, failed the utter muse,

found a hole in his bat, his poem stumbling slowly

on the twenty-ninth beat. He paused once too often,

but kept summer winds in the right place, morning’s

knowledge of the sports page hanging above breakfast.

 

His sweet music is still in place, whatever it beats towards,

though today I saw a wooden Ted Williams undressed

at the Hall of Fame, the Excalibured swing frozen forever

in the groove, elbows tucked tightly in as if he’s hiding

yesterday’s secrets. The sculptor chiseled a dream,

 

a wisp of motion, a sword Arthur’d be proud of, its blade

dancing in sunlight, a stroke gently uphill of everything

else desirable. And now and then he’d stand beside

a batting cage, now and then nod, now and then dream

his poem back before Earth went its dreadful, noisy way.

 

 

TONY CONIGLIARO, RED SOX LF

 

Near here, bent, miraculously broken,

adrift on a foreign sea, moving in fog,

grasping for the stiffness of the bat

in his hands, tunneling his eyes toward

a nearly familiar pitcher on the mound,

dreaming again like a Swampscott boy

of being where he had already been,

Tony sleeps the partial sleep, the taste

of batting still in his mouth, still, still.

 

 

YOUNG SHORTSTOP TWO

                                               

Graceful as a praying mantis,

limbed like a spider

and as far-reaching.

 

His glove is all-enveloping,

a kind of fly-eater

with soft leather edges.

 

Pivoting in the double-play,

his feet ant-quick, arms wing-like,

he is the very whisper of sensation.

 

On the other end, whipping

the ball shoulder high

to infield compatriot,

 

one foot leading his throw

on to the middle base, he is

the raw-earth engineer of plays.

 

When he goes into the hole,

bent like a miner, hinged and coiled,

risking the point of no-return,

 

he becomes the ultimate craftsman,

architect, composer, operettist.

He builds the music.

 

We listen and watch,

we hear it again and again.

 

THOSE OLD SUNTANNERS

or

I Don't See Too Many Guys in Suntans* Anymore

* (U.S. Army Class A Summer Dress Issue, Circa '40's - '50's)

 

You know, the old summer Class A's they saved

from their promised long weekend leaves,

those killers, those formidable young warriors,

those hot Omaha Beach swimmers with salt

in their noses and into gun barrels and curing

half the ills and evils they had ever known

as if it were the sole balm from the living god,

those St. Lo low flyers of updrafts of gray dawn,

Bastogne Bullies, bridge-wreckers at Germany's

inevitable edge; friends who passed through my

Seoul immemorial times leaving their footprints

for my wayward boots to overshadow, fill in,

pass on to this destiny.  Of course, they have

popped the beltline button, split the crotch

in hell's anxieties, let their quick waistlines

go fallow with beer and dreams' nutrients,

those old warriors of Sundays past without

other balms, or Saturday evening shellings or

unconsumed bombs that threaten Wednesdays

fifty years later; those slim-legged survivors

who later wore them with collegiate jackets,

myriad sport coat ensembles, slick-cigaretted,

crew-cutted, such old world-in-the-face looks

that should have toppled their young empires.

You know them, how they came back to play

on the green fields as if they had never left

the chalk-striped confines, showed the kids

how the game used to be played, those sun-

tanners hitting behind the runners, bunters

of the lost art when the whole world sat back

on its heels that the big sound was now over,

put their muscle on the line late in the game

when the only thing left was heart and horror

at losing, having seen too much for their time.

Remember them on baked diamonds of the quiet

Earth, how there was an urgency to collapse

time into a controllable fist, yet how free they

were, breathing on their own, above salt water,

the awful messages buried behind their brows

for all time to come, unstitched wounds and scars

amber in late evening's breezes, like chevrons

from their elsewheres.  Their only true badge

was the suntans carried home from Remargen

and Mount Casino leaves, those slim, fit-all

occasion trousers, pressable, neat, signatured

with angst and annihilation and world freedom;

those narrow-waisted emblems of the Forties,

the Fifties, neat with tie and shirt, wore cement

on summer days of their labors, or roofing tar,

some to class and some not, collapsing time again.

I write this to celebrate the last Monday in May,

the day when the soft-shoed parade passes through

the middle of town and the middle of memory. 

 

The hawkers will sell their bright wares, wearing

their municipal permits as badges, cylinderizing

balloons, authorizing plastic toy gun purchases,

leaving their remnant discards in cluttered gutters

the early sweeper will gather, making money

on the sad memorial, dreaming of next Flag Day

and the Fourth of July.  Popcorn will burst

its tiny explosion, ice cream bars will melt,

children will think they gambol in a ballpark.

Then, then only apparent, I will see some old

ball players, the Earth-savers, underground or

remembering, chino-less and walking among

the very memorable names; comrade, comrade,

comrade or one's teammate, teammate, teammate,

illusions of the noisy past, clad in somber pinstripes

or cedar, carrying grandchildren, bearing them up

from under grass, evoking Monday of all Mondays,

those swift ball hawks, those young Earth-dreamers,

who survive in so many ways, that legion of names

falling across Saugus the way we remember them,

like a litany of summer evenings full of first names

gone past but called for the First Sergeant's roster:

Basil P., Thomas A., Lawrence D., Edward M., Guy C.,

Hugh M., Arthur D., Edward D., James W., John K.,

Walter K., William M., Frank P., Howard B., names

that settled softly called, reverent even for this day,

across a sun-drenched Stackpole Field, bat on ball

and the echo of a thousand games swung about the air

as if time itself has been compressed into late innings,

those swift ball hawks in pursuit of the inevitable; oh,

young, in May, the whole Earth suddenly gone silent,

but bound, bound to build memories, in May, in May.

                       

Tom Sheehan was 1st Bn. 31st Infantry Regiment, Korea. He is also the author of Murder at the Forum and Death of a Lottery Foe, from the Harry Krisman Mysteries (Hammer & Anvil Books, 2012 & 2013).

 

 

 

Jess Provencio

calvin

 

calvin needs a lot of saving

the smell of pot follows him

as he climbs the bus steps

the dentist wouldn’t know where to start

the few teeth left in blackened gums

are brown    gapped like tombstones

he squints past a milky cataract

the eye doctor doesn’t have a chart for him

 

calvin is a little too skinny

but it’s a week before the first

and they used the EBT money early

the gas got turned off last month

and its more expensive to buy hot food

his wife already spent the morning

being paid to do someone else’s laundry

instead of being inside at the warm Jack in the Box

she is selling bootlegs on the bus

from a shoulder bag big enough for the baby they never had

 

his hands tremble    old age and withdrawal

as smoke curls from his hoodie pocket

his wife looks up in horror

as she pauses from selling the DVDs

calvin        yer cigarette ain’t out

 

he fishes the joint from his pocket

grabbing it by the lit end

he looks embarrassed as he blows on his fingers

still slightly befuddled from the high

          oh yeah    you was just gonna let me burn

 

 

karate jesus

 

i have 19 occupations

i’m an FBI agent     LAPD

i’m here to protect you

he flashes his bus pass with a trembling hand

as he feels senility encroaching

 

he wears a karate uniform

with a crucifix stretching from knee to chin

a 99 cent store cloth bag

with a marine bandanna safety pinned on

 

 

semper fi

 

a grocery store clerk who rides the line

tells me he played for the dodgers

says he was one of the first african americans on the team

back in the day    LA or Brooklyn    we aren’t sure

went into her ralph’s and spread out newspaper clippings

a scrapbook in his cloth sack

that showed when he wore a uniform

 

now he is an old man with graying hair

toting gallon bottles to be refilled

the water in his building isn’t drinkable

he eats bananas by the bag

its hot in his apartment in the summer

he’s been sweating     needs the potassium

its been a long time since he could afford a place with air

 

 

the imaginary piano teacher

 

i speak swahili and ghetto      kiss my black ass
invisible behind the multi-hued wall of people
the voice comes            i'm just an old man
you're 16 and you already been playing 9 years
you are the king of the imaginary piano     i crown you
another sunday night bus trip filled with unique people    
tucked into this unventilated sardine can
their sobriety     and sanity        is questionable
i am nothing    but i have peace of mind

one man says this started at the beginning of the line
for the next 37 minutes        he has a captive audience

you should be riding in a limousine
i don't know why you're here but god knows
thirty years from now you're going to drive past a bus
in a limousine and remember
david told me i was gonna be somebody
david’s accent betrays no trace of Swahili

just a tired old man    disillusioned by time
it just came to me    bend the notes
first you're gonna learn the traditional way
and then you're gonna bend them
someone shouts that someone needs to bend this guy’s head
the driver chimes in        threatening to pull over
it just came to me
i don't even know what I'm talking about
it is my position in life to help people

because god blessed me
he tickles the ivory he envisions dangling in the air
a bewildered youth trapped in the window seat next to him

 

 

mister lester beau jay rhymes

i was born in Atlanta        raised in New York
five gallon bucket at his feet
filled with sunflower seeds and steel reserve cans
he’s got an old radio with a long antenna
going a million miles away with his music
between the alcohol fumes and the length of that antenna
he just might be talking to the stars
i specialize in the ladies   
white    black     brown    Japanese
not asian    Japanese

on his way to see the judge   
philosophizing from behind his shades
you gotta show your face in the place
he fancies himself the black Otis from Andy Griffith
just can’t kick the sauce
manners mean something
you have to have good manners
he crosses and uncrosses his legs
they might respect you
you know the judges be getting high as a kite
before they put their robes on       
get up on that bench
he spits out sunflower seed shells
a few stick in his beard
when they want to know something they ask the black man
instead of coming to the hood themselves to find out
how sweet is the watermelon       
how ripe is the cotton

 

 

the king of venice

 

i’ve been to jail 15 times

everyone punishes you     for being someone else

he fancies himself the king of Venice

dollhouse dude has over a million hits on the internet

pictures with evangelists    photo op with K-Fed

riding a scooter with outfits odd as his choice of headwear

 

most people are highly uneducated

don’t even know where Madagascar is    but

they know how to shop     target    

k mart        he  calls it    the green light special

today he is riding a stuffed horse

taking up the entire middle of the bus

my seat mate and I laugh until tears run down our cheeks

clothed in a mariachi uniform

complete with blood red sombrero

he is relating his dry trip across the desert

which is why his horse needs tequila

 

the American dream is nothing

everyone is a slave to the little stuff

Juan from Guatemala        in his fifties

wears his granddaughter’s dollhouse on his head

pictures of him online on Hollywood Boulevard

he wrote a book about how apartments should be affordable

maybe the tequila is the problem

but he feels being homeless has less worries

 

it all depends on the moves you make

and the rules you break

all this exists         because someone broke the rules

 

Jess Provencio received a degree in Mexican-American Studies from CSU-LA in 2009. As an avid reader, and a bilingual writer, Jess draws inspiration from people watching. Jess’ first published work, you’ll never tip a go-go boy in this town again, an anthology about West Hollywood, is available on Amazon.