Poem Bale Three Regarding Horseplayer Luck & Lack Read online

  Title Page & Licensing Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Poems (1-25)

  Title Page & Licensing Notes

  Poem Bale Three Regarding Horseplayer Luck & Lack

  By Thomas M. McDade

  Copyright 2014 Thomas M. McDade

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  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to the following publications that have published many of these poems:

  Bender, Blind Horse Review, Blind Man's Rainbow, Chance, Creative with Words, E Pluribus Aluminum (Liquid Paper Press), Home Planet News, Insert Zine Name Here, Moody Street Irregulars, Mushroom Dreams, Nerve Bundle Review, Paisley Moon, Pawtucket Times, Small Pond Magazine, Thrill & Swill, White Crow, Willow Review, Yo-Yo

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  Poems (1-25)

  Boarder

  Luck

  Lily Eyes

  Volunteer Corn

  Rimbaud of the Roses

  Important as Weather

  The Clocker, Narragansett

  Clocker Sarge

  Three Talents

  Paradoxical Thirst

  Systems

  Belated Respects

  Resume

  Late Post

  The Dancer

  Poor Blood

  Saturn

  Buster’s Full-Service Gulf

  Richard Hugo, April 6th, 1978

  Ivy League Bookie

  Ice Cream

  The Well-Cleaned Room

  Wishin’ Mission

  Sandalwood

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  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to the following publications that have published many of these poems:

  Abbey, Amaranthine Muse, Bean Feast, Bender, Bibliophilos, Brobdingnagian Times, Chance Magazine, Clark Street Review, Lake Effect, Lucky Star, Mushroom Dreams, Nerve Cowboy, Pawtucket Times, Pitchfork, Poet's Fantasy, Santa Clara Review, Slugfest, LTD, Sunken Lines

  Boarder

  Between the race track and the river

  that once powered textile mills,

  there’s a gray cottage

  a woman who never married bought

  after working forty-five years

  inspecting cloth, never missing a day.

  Since 1962, she’s rented the extra room

  to a horse trainer from Houston

  who’s as courteous as the parish monsignor.

  She keeps the room spotless, always fresh

  Air Wick on the dresser,

  a frond of blessed and braided palm

  above the mirror.

  She tells her friends the sixty or so days

  he’ll be with her are just enough of company.

  The track’s a mixed blessing.

  Her waitress niece will cause some trouble

  angling for a jockey like the married one

  who gave her a fur and more last year.

  Her nephew will be staining the family name

  acting crazy with wild hot walkers and grooms.

  And her brother will be betting with both fists,

  calling every day to check if the boarder has

  confided any inside dope.

  No doubt she’ll be sponsoring Christmas again.

  But that’s off her mind on racetrack days

  when smooth, sweet horse names echo

  from the announcer’s calls, hook the wind

  to ride into the mill-worn river’s memory

  like whispered compliments that will repeat

  and amplify nights she slips into the trainer’s

  chilly bed to sleep a fitful boarder’s sleep

  when the racetrack awkwardly hosts

  a boat show or circus.

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  Luck

  If there were a meter to measure

  luck, Slaney would never have to lie

  to leave work to check his level at the track.

  Fired again, he goes to the library

  to start another self-help book.

  A woman sits beside him, thumbs rapidly

  through a PDR.

  Catching Slaney’s eye she begins to chatter.

  Her son has cancer, she’s checking

  out his prescriptions.

  She talks of driving to the hospital,

  a hubcap flying off here dying heap.

  She didn’t care, it was the last one.

  At the light a half-mile later

  a crowd watched as the runaway cap parked

  against its wheel.

  Is this a sign?

  She sobs like a person whose ration of luck

  ran its course with a homing hubcap.

  As if Slaney had to leave work early to bet

  the surest nag ever, he lies, says he heard

  of a similar situation.

  Good luck followed

  the rolling omen.

  Kissing his cheek, she walks away smiling.

  Without control, Slaney rises, staggers in circles

  around the newspaper racks, wishing the library

  door were a black hole to suck him out of orbit

  because he feels lucky and knows the entries

  hold a horse named Hubcap or something

  else that woman said.

  There might never be another wheel

  so sure to rest against.

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  Lily Eyes

  Lily, has been working Lincoln Downs

  since arriving from Dublin decades ago.

  She handles binocular rentals.

  Hubby Jim works nights at Pontiac Textile

  so he’s on hand for all the five furlong sprints.

  He and Lily have a gainful scheme

  they researched for weeks like scholars.

  It’s fixed on the first three entrants in a dash.

  Seconds to the bell, Lily rushes to grandstand

  light to zoom in on the starting gate

  with her very own field glasses.

  If one of the trio springs out first she hikes

  an arm and signals eagle-eyed Jim

  with finger or fingers corresponding

  to the leader’s saddlecloth digit

  like a drinker ordering pints in a bar

  on Grafton Street.

  Once he got three winning ten-dollar

  tickets before the machine shut down.

  But most of the time it was one or none

  depending on clerk chicanery.

  When the technicians finally got it

  right and their system went belly-up

  Jim turned to spiking income

  through break time

  booking at the Pontiac mill.

  Lily when bored would sucker bet

  the entire trio in a race, a homage

  to the old scam before waking up

  and renting out her personal scopes

  along with a history: honest to God

  Royal Navy equipment

  her IRA uncle, one of the luckiest

  to ever wager in Ireland, willed her.

  Of course, just men looking dapper

  and heeled enough to spring for five

  bucks instead of the single on the sign.

  She kept things on the up an up

  putting a buck of each side

  transaction into the till recalling how

  her right hand arthritis used to vanish

  days of the Horsy Trinity and she crosses


  herself, tapping forehead, chest

  and shoulders with the three fingers cocked—

  praying for the technology to fail.

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  Volunteer Corn

  Sully ran the Longmont Club

  and he often provided a pot of butter

  & sugar corn that he farmed himself

  in a rented Seekonk field.

  Weekly, he’d announce a special

  batch of volunteer corn and then

  explain what it was again,

  grown from seed the farmer spilt, etcetera.

  Sully claimed it had medicinal properties

  and was the only kind that tasted good with Bud.

  Sully took bets on horses and sports.

  Oh, just about anything: how many

  white and yellow kernels on any given ear?

  Vice squads raided his operation regularly.

  Always seemed to be the day of the volunteer

  which was confiscated for evidence.

  The sergeant worked a toothpick

  during the bare bulb interrogation

  pissing off Sully more than the fine.

  Stomach cancer got Sully and some patrons

  argued volunteer corn did him dirt.

  Some said the vice squad stress cause Sully’s death.

  His younger brother, Joe, blamed Utah Beach shrapnel.

  He took over the bar and the Seekonk field.

  Joe couldn’t produce volunteer corn, but the rows

  were never straighter. He reasoned seed you’re aware

  you’ve spilled won’t volunteer.

  It was a Zen thing Sully mastered by forging on

  despite vice squad harassment.

  Joe refused to walk the bookmaking path.

  Many customers moved on,

  settled at the Silver Cloud Bar

  where there’s a bookie and on Saturdays,

  hot dogs, plain and simple.

  They fondly remember Sully and wait

  for volunteer corn to show up

  on a TV quiz show

  but they don’t dwell on it.

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  Rimbaud of the Roses

  Working asphalt I’m a mystic

  stalled on a bed of fiery coals.

  It takes hydrants of ale to put me out.

  Occasionally I drive blacktop

  from my mind, think of yellow bricks

  leading to Oz.

  But it would take a shaman’s soul

  to rescue me from the taverns.

  Bartenders, please teach me magic

  to spread asphalt out cold.

  Then what excuse to act

  like a drunken hint