|
LOVE AND BASEBALL
The Yankees are down 5
to 2
to the Red Sox with one out
in the eighth inning. It’s the seventh
game and Pedro Martinez is pitching.
You can turn off the light now,
pull up the blanket and go to sleep.
Or when Tom calls from
Philly
asking if the Yanks have a chance,
you can lie and tell him, “Yeah,
they hit the ball hard in the seventh
and Pedro always runs out of gas,”
as Jeter lines a double to right.
Stay on the phone,
pretend it’s good
luck. Talk about Joanne. She’s half
your age. You’ve been seeing her
the past eight months. She’s smart
and funny, has big tits, full soft
lips, a boyfriend she lives with.
At a bar, Tom would buy
beers
until closing, genuflect at your feet,
call you his hero. He’d wear
this silly grin, tell you how lucky
you are. “You mean, she comes over,
you fuck, and she just goes home?”
You’d shrug your
shoulders, hold
your hands out to the side,
surprised it’s happening to you.
He’d stop listening as you tried
to explain there’s much more to it,
that it’s better than he could imagine.
Both of you would grow
quiet,
remember women who broke
your hearts and, for one dumb
blessed moment, Joanne makes up
for all of them. On the screen,
Bernie bangs out a hit. Grady Little,
That dumb shit, visits
the mound,
sticks with Pedro. You tell Tom
you’ve fallen in love. You can hear
his stubbled chin rub against
the mouthpiece as he shakes his head.
You tell him she loves you too.
She said the best parts
of her life
are the hours talking on the phone,
the times you walk hand in hand
after a movie, rainy weekdays spent
in bed. But the night her boyfriend
found out, she called crying.
Matsui, Posada double,
tie the score.
The stadium’s speakers blare “Enter
The Sandman” as Mariano trots in
from the bullpen. Later, you learn
the difference between being in love
with you and that she still loves Bill.
It means that if he
will forgive her,
she will do anything to try and fix
things. They’ve been together since
she was nineteen, his family
is her family and she’s not strong
enough to leave him, live on her own
It means it has nothing
to do with you.
You were perfect and she’s sorry
she can’t love you the way you deserve.
And no, it doesn’t matter how unhappy
she’s been the last two and a half years.
She threw his car keys in the yard,
Wrapped her arms around
his legs
as he left with a shopping bag of clothes.
It means you’re trying to forget her.
But any time the phone rings, you hope
it’s Joanne. It means she’s with him
and you feel sad and empty, foolish, old.
Meanwhile, Mariano
throws three
scoreless innings, the Red Sox bring
Wakefield in and she still sometimes
calls. She sends gifts, deep soft pillows
for your bed, slips a burned CD under
your door when she knows you’re not home.
You’re playing it the
next time she calls
to tell you about a dream she had: you,
her, the softball field near her house
and a little boy. She was pitching
a whiffle ball underhanded. You were
helping the kid hold the bat, swing.
Sometimes, little boys
grow up
to be Aaron Boone, they hit
a fluttering knuckleball over
the wall and into the night.
and the Yankees win the pennant,
the Yankees win the pennant.
Sometimes, you walk off
the field
with your head down and end up
alone, your sleep restless, troubled.
You spend your life missing
something you got so close to,
the thing you want most.
Tony Gloeggler was born, grew up, lives and probably
will die in NYC. He currently runs a group home for
developmentally disabled men in Brooklyn. His work has
appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His
chapbook, ONE ON ONE, won the 1998 Pearl Poetry Prize
and ONE WISH LEFT, his first full length collection,
was published by Pavement Saw Press in 2002. His next collection, My Other
Life, will be published by Jane Street Press by this summer. He can be
reached at AGloeggler@nyc.rr.com.
More of Tony's work is available on Poetz
2002. |