Poem Bale Three Regarding Horseplayer Luck & Lack Read online

I call the wake.

  What the cat answered to

  will be the funeral.

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  Resume

  Someone who’d drank

  himself into a contender

  did not attack me

  after I’d failed to argue

  at the Middle Street bar

  that I’d never been in the ring

  at the old North Main Arena.

  No gambler who’d lost a bundle

  on a phantom nag I’d saddled

  knifed me at the Indian Lounge

  when I offered an old-timer

  who’d testified I’d trained horses

  at Narragansett no denial.

  And after many years

  it’s still these two jobs

  I find highlighting the resume

  in my white collar eyes

  doing their damnedest to

  turn my every conversation

  into an interview.

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  Late Post

  Rock’s Bar

  established 1907,

  faces a stone wall low

  enough to keep

  cemetery

  headstones

  in the corners

  of drinking eyes.

  The bookie who owned

  the Indian Lounge,

  established in ‘36,

  stares back.

  Some Rock’s

  patrons owed him,

  others had cash

  coming when he died.

  Occasionally a mug

  is lifted at a window,

  gratefully or cursing.

  Eternal deprivation

  would be more peaceful

  were it not for noisy

  Triple Crown crowds

  and a walking bookie

  stationed at a corner

  table at Rock’s

  those Classic afternoons.

  He sips flat ginger ale,

  records flash paper bets

  and senses ghosts

  of win, place and show

  jumping the wall --

  all the bones in Sunday suits

  planning post time

  at midnight or so.

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  The Dancer

  Bobby used get tossed out

  of diners back in ‘63

  for dancing on tables

  and counters

  whenever the Orlons

  sang "South Street"

  on the jukebox.

  You'd think it were the only

  song in the world spinning

  the very last time!

  I lost track of him until ‘68

  when I was hitchhiking

  to Lincoln Downs and he stopped.

  “Hey Jude" was blasting on the radio.

  Dancing as best as

  someone driving could

  he hugged the steering wheel

  moaning the name

  of a blonde he used to date.

  He didn't care about people

  sitting on their horns.

  Calming down at a news break

  he gave me a hot horse

  he'd gotten from J.J. Kelly.

  It won but I never got to thank him.

  I've heard drugs laid him low

  but all the same he dances

  in my thoughts now and then.

  I sing "Hey Jude, don't make it bad"

  like it's the only prayer in the world

  and no one is left to say it but me.

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  Poor Blood

  I was never wild or tough

  enough to fit with Bobby’s crowd

  but sometimes he let me pretend.

  We sold blood at an

  alley clinic in Providence

  to finance cheap wine

  and horse bets at Narragansett.

  I nickeled jukeboxes

  at the Gem and Tracey’s

  and applauded as he

  danced on tables

  until the cops came.

  We shared a woman

  but not the beauty whose name

  on his arm got eagled over

  when she ditched him.

  Or the one whose death

  fueled the rumors about her

  disease killing him soon.

  I helped him extort some

  money and he cut me in,

  let me fire his .38

  into the Ten Mile River.

  The last time I saw Bobby

  he had a fancy car and new tattoos.

  He seemed happy,

  had a place in Jersey

  with a fine woman

  from Oregon and Monmouth

  Racetrack was at his mercy.

  He’d found a fish & chip

  joint as good as the Gem.

  When I saw the obit,

  dead at 53 in Perth Amboy,

  I muttered a crack

  about poor blood not

  worth a bet or a buzz before

  dropping my wild and tough

  guy pose to pray he’d scored

  big at Monmouth every day

  until the last.

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  Saturn

  I’ve visited every

  race track

  in the nation,

  the old man brags.

  Those ovals

  ring my mind

  like the hoops

  sprucing up Saturn

  and that’s one

  of his handles.

  My best day

  was at a bookie

  joint in Providence,

  when I missed just

  the sixth on a muddy

  Pimlico card.

  Drink to that memory,

  he shouts and buys

  for everyone.

  Then he recalls

  the eight glory races,

  gate to wire

  for young folks

  at the bar.

  He hopes they will

  have many babies

  and use the winners’ names

  and maybe his

  in lullabies

  and thrilling night yarns.

  His friends roar,

  shout bravos and raise

  their mugs in toast

  to all his lucky horses

  and Saturn’s lively gift

  for ringing up a tale

  and quenching

  the thirst of his universe.

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  Buster’s Full-Service Gulf

  There was a shelf

  of paperback westerns

  regular customers could

  borrow free: Max Brand,

  Louis L’Amour, and Zane Grey.

  When a gas tab was settled

  Buster would pull

  out a bottle

  of Four Roses

  and you could pour

  your own like in TV

  and movie saloons.

  Terminally ill patients

  at Wallum Lake

  would bet by mail

  any racetrack in the nation.

  Buster called this

  Pony Express.

  When a new doctor

  tried to stop their action

  they went on a hunger strike.

  Buster was so moved

  he stopped worrying

  about bets

  with fraudulent postmarks

  mailed after races

  were official also

  offered book rate

  access to

  his wild west.

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  Richard Hugo, April 6th, 1978

  The reading was in the Oak Room

  where I’d worked hanging art

  exh
ibits during college.

  I knew exactly where six years

  earlier I’d placed a Norman Rockwell:

  Arcaro weighing in after a race.

  And a combat series by an artist,

  a chopper pilot in Vietnam.

  Between poems Hugo spoke

  of his bombardier days in WWII,

  never once hitting a target.

  Working for Boeing in Seattle

  he’d found a poet doesn’t make

  a good employee, always somewhere else.

  I hadn’t had a job in months.

  He smoked cigarettes lodged deeply

  in the V of his fingers as if they had

  to be secure for a magic trick.

  I folded a sheet of paper three times

  and he autographed it.

  Did he think I was just being polite

  with that scrap and would toss it soon?

  He’d covered poetry, war and work,

  I included horses for him.

  Held up to the light, the “g” in his name

  pointed directly at the four

  in the feature race at Aqueduct.

  He wished me well with my writing,

  voice gentle and sincere.

  I did the right thing with his signature,

  wedged it in one of his collections

  on words he’d read that April night

  and I must admit I bet horses

  with that saddlecloth number.

  But it wasn’t slamming the book

  against walls when those nags

  lost that ruined its binding.

  It was sneak reading at work,

  stuffing it into drawers and wastepaper

  baskets; that volume often hitting the floor

  like an errant bomb.

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  Ivy League Bookie

  Larry drank Ouzo all day

  which customers said was sacrilege

  for an Irishman.

  There was a pool table

  with red felt instead of green

  which was always amazing

  drunk or sober

  as if all the grass on earth

  had turned scarlet too.

  Old men watched MTV

  with the same sense of wonder.

  Larry had a Princeton degree

  but his old man told him

  bookmaking was more secure

  than Wall Street,

  besides he was the only son left.

  There was a picture of the true heir

  Larry’s brother above

  the Kennedys and William Butler Yeats.

  Marty was killed in the Second War

  at the Battle of Anzio.

  There was a curvy blonde

  with a fondness for iron pumping men.

  Sometimes when the TV music grabbed

  her she’d kick off her shoes, jump up

  on the pool table and dance

  never upsetting a ball.

  There were wagers on how long

  before her damp footprints

  would evaporate.

  Larry would down two Ouzos quickly

  and sadly lament, he’d be on

  the other side of the bar

  had Marty moved like her.

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  Ice Cream

  In addition to the vice squad

  Barney had to watch

  for schemers betting races

  already run as well

  as those less crafty

  who favored extortion.

  If he called the cops

  he’d just be admitting

  bookmaking they thought

  but once he had a couple

  of guys arrested and he remained

  free as he had through years

  of court tangles that were fine with me,

  liked working for an outlaw

  when I was a paperboy delivering

  72 papers Barney dropped off corner

  of Kenmore and Beverage Hill

  each day but the Sabbath.

  At the end of the week

  I’d bike to his variety store

  pay up and he’d tip me a half

  gallon of ice cream usually

  the three-in-one kind.

  A big radio in a dark cranny

  crackled sometimes

  race results or live calls

  that I imagined secretly

  taped and played in court,

  exhibit A and so on melting

  down until judge,

  D.A. and jury could

  no longer tell the chocolate

  from the strawberry and vanilla

  in that puddle of proof

  and Barney acquitted

  left me and other

  paperboys and girls

  measuring the effect

  of legal expenses

  on ice cream futures

  as if it were The Wall

  Street Journal

  we delivered.

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  The Well-Cleaned Room

  Mornings at seven Mary

  would start cleaning

  just for spite

  in the sixteen dollar room

  where the young man

  collecting unemployment

  who stayed up all hours

  bothering other tenants

  with his typing

  should not be sleeping in

  especially when he never

  bothered looking

  for work anyway.

  She suspects he’s a gambler.

  Newspapers in the trash

  are folded to pages

  with photos

  of racing horses.

  But then he helped her up

  when she fell off a chair

  changing light

  bulbs across the hall.

  He seemed to care

  more than her family

  and she granted him

  extra shut-eye

  cleaned his room well

  after noon.

  Now that his benefits

  have run out

  and he’s joining the Navy,

  Mary offered a room

  with a better view

  but his mind’s set.

  She picks poems

  out of the trash –

  the ones with words

  X-ed out like her mark

  a son witnesses.

  She imagines the sailor

  boy cherishing her

  rent receipts.

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  Wishin’ Mission

  Gun for sale! Testing – one, two, POW —

  no blanks, reality on a bank of the Blackstone.

  The pops don’t match a pin ciphering a row

  of balloons named for lousy love affairs.

  Water doesn’t die that way in broad

  daylight, can’t even wound it unless lead

  poisoning counts.

  A car for sale too, wild Olds test ride on I-95

  is no big deal no matter how fast

  except it is high noon.

  No siren like a thousand tots extracting shrill

  voices from the lips of party balloons.

  The speedometer needle bounces

  as if wanting to escape to puncture

  a sphere a billion miles from speed’s prism –

  a low or high flying Goodyear blimp

  or a cloud would do.

  Firearm and auto deals turn to stone,

  no, sand, at the China Star on the same

  level as a waitress’s saucy apron destined

  to parachute off a bent brass safety pin.

  The spotted fabric shares the fuchsia

  of a kid’s Memorial Day Parade balloon

  slapped silly by heathen rain.

  Money change
s hoodlum hands.

  Hell no, will never land in racetrack coffers.

  Well, not a risky win wager anyway, Wishin’

  Mission, to place sir.

  When he does at big odds it’s all heaven

  bent helium.

  Finishing second is a slow burning cigar

  capable of igniting hand grenades.

  Balloons are slang for dollars and Mission

  is just a flat donkey

  target of a birthday tail some say

  who bet him just to win.

  A day to exterminate the frantic and flunked

  twenty-fours of wall-to-wall inflated decoys,

  skin and innards that were cannonballs

  conning mosquitoes, bees, wasps, hornets

  and pin and needle-minded folks.

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  Sandalwood

  Aussie segues from the story

  about pulling a gun

  and holding up a bandit

  in Sacramento

  who was trying to steal

  his night’s cab receipts

  to one about his Navy

  parachute rigging days

  and how he should

  have gotten G.I. Bill cash

  regardless of college as deftly

  as he performs card tricks

  he says he learned

  from an old swami cabbie

  whose taxi smelled

  of hexes and curses

  and sandalwood.

  Drinkers

  at the Indian Lounge

  wishing Aussie would

  get drunk enough

  to tell what’s behind

  his slight of hand

  have just about given up hope.

  He’s nuts about a redhead

  20 years younger

  who has a bratty child.

  Now it’s one nervous trick

  without stickup or ripcord.

  A draught beer, a wager

  on Real Note at Suffolk,

  Leroy Moyers up

  and Aussie’s out the door

  as quickly as a man

  who’s traded card wizardry

  with the kid for an hour

  alone with the mama

  and can’t escape

  the smell of sandalwood.

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