Five Poems
by Craig Cotter
Dominic Boni
I was 14 when he took me to New York for the first time
to see the Yankees play the Red Sox,
then the train to Boston
to see the Sox in Fenway play the Yankees.
*
East of Utica the train stopped,
then backed-up for 20 minutes.
“Will we miss the game?”
“No, this is how Amtrak works.”
*
My parents gave him money for expenses—
our first stop Vernon Downs.
He put it all on a trifecta and won, peeled off $120
and handed it to me for spending money.
*
In New York he pointed-out the Twin Towers with disgust.
“Such ugly blocks, how could they let them build that?”
Then to the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.
*
Subway to the Bronx.
Much of the crowd drunk and cursing.
*
We walked barely lit streets after the night game
to find the cheapest hotel.
Once inside our room
he leaned against the bathroom wall above the toilet
and his hand and arm went through the wall.
*
Next day the train to Boston
to stay with his younger brother Uncle Jim
and Aunt Olga.
Jim, a successful civil engineer,
took us to his seats in Fenway
close to home.
In Boston a few days after the game
my grandfather took me to the Combat Zone:
X-rated everything.
We walked into the lobby of a porn theatre.
He asked, “What do you want, gay, straight or bi?
It’s all the same.”
It was the first time I’d heard anything positive about gays.
I said nothing.
He chose bi.
*
I watched mostly the men—
very good-looking men.
I’d never seen live sex
and when the first man’s hardon came on the screen
so huge,
I thought something was wrong with me.
*
In Fenway my Instamatic snapped
pictures of Freddie Lynn,
then Carlton Fisk goofing with the grounds crew.
*
My team was Detroit and later that year
one of our idiot, horrible pitchers, Vern Ruhle
hit Jim Rice and broke his wrist.
Rice couldn’t play that Series
the Sox lost in 7 to the Big Red Machine.
*
I’ve taken myself to 10 countries, 4 continents.
That trip by Amtrak with my Italian grandfather
equal to them all.
He was Bukowski
without the art.
Hard drinking, a lousy father,
conman, gambler, womanizer,
tool and die at Chicago Pneumatic.
Great athlete,
left-handed first baseman in the Italian leagues
in his teens and twenties,
power, glove and average.
That summer he took a Greyhound to Michigan
for our east coast swing.
At 70 he’d just stopped playing for the company team.
Showed me a huge bruise where he’d slid into second.
I was a catcher
and he wanted to take a few swings in the backyard.
He took my very large wood bat
(I was always over-doing it to not seem gay)
in the back of our grey brick house
and had me pitch.
As he was old, I threw him a slow
overhand lob.
He took the pitch, incensed.
“C’mon, PUT IT IN THERE!”
The next pitch
threw hard as I could
and he launched it.
Crack so loud,
ball moving so fast
I flinched—
it traveled high—
out of our half-acre back yard,
cleared an 80-foot oak—
cleared the vacant lot in back of our house—
still moving up
cleared the next street, Lakewood Drive,
and sailed towards Watkins Lake,
finally so small
I lost it.
Ruthian.
Kaline’s homeruns line-drives.
*
We walked through our yard
(it was my only baseball),
through the vacant lot,
across Lakewood,
down to the house across the street from the Powers
and down to the shore of Watkins Lake—
never found it.
Zuma
Open changing room
open urinals, no stall walls
hottest 17 surfer
5-9, 130, long shaggy blond hair
peeing on his leg
jellyfish
Another Failed Aesthetic Theory
Our last meeting
another long walk in the woods.
Can't remember why I was nervous.
Today would’ve done you by the stream/
you would've done me,
and the decades that followed
would’ve had more light.
*
Time can’t interfere with perfect connections.
Another failed aesthetic theory.
Al Kaline
We knew Kaline was not at the level of
Ruth, Musial, Williams.
We knew Kaline was superior to
Mantle, Clemente. Yastrzemski.
*
Jim Katt:
“When I’d get to Detroit for a series
Kaline would send a cab to my hotel
to make sure I’d get to the stadium on time
so he could go 4-for-4.”
Housewives for weekday games
fathers for weekend games
begging them to take us to Tiger Stadium early for batting practice,
Kaline, Horton and Cash filling the stands with free baseballs
running around the wood seats trying to grab a ricochet.
*
After retirement a TV announcer,
“Well George, he don’t got no curveball at all today…”
Straight to the majors after high school
never a day in the minors,
high school mostly about playing 3 games a day—
*
As most of us thought we’d never hit a ball
when our fathers started chucking them at us
swinging and missing hundreds of times
afraid of a 6-1 guy throwing a hardball overhand—
As I was moving away from sports
Kaline held on, improved,
became a distinguished and articulate broadcaster with
10 Gold Gloves
18 All -Star games
3000 hits
tearing-it-up in the ’68 World Series
first ballot Hall of Famer
*
My worst losses in 2020 Kaline and RBG.
Our country needs sports heroes for teenage boys and Justice.
*
Sweet to watch visiting rookies at Tiger Stadium
who’d not done their homework
try to go from first to third on a single to right—
Kaline mowed-them-down
like John Gillan cutting tall grass with a scythe at Red Camp.
A God-Centered Poem for Bernie White
I don’t understand Grace, the Trinity, Krishna
or why George Harrison lived in a 118-room mansion.
*
My last confession was in 1980 in East Lansing, Michigan.
When I entered, the arch-bishop offered me the booth
or to sit in his office, which I chose. We sat in chairs
facing each other five feet apart.
After sharing my 19-year-old sins, he began
asking questions.
“Are you a student at the university?”
“Yes.”
“Do you cheat on tests.”
“No.”
“Are you dating?”
“Yes.”
“Are you having sex?”
“Yes.”
“Sex outside of marriage is a sin, you should ask God for forgiveness.”
“No, I’m in love with her, I don’t think it’s a sin.”
He phrased it in a couple different ways and I did not accept his view.
“Then I will ask forgiveness for you.”
I walked out.
*
Down in an earthquake,
wood, metal and glass splinters piercing me in the rain,
will I ask God for help?
*
30 years ago I was riding in a 707
when it hit a bang in the sky,
dropped out-of-control,
I thought, “Party’s over.”
The pilot, after regaining control:
“Nothing to worry about,
we just crossed the wake of a 747.”
BIO: Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York, grew-up in Michigan, and has lived in California since 1986. His poems have appeared in hundreds of journals in the U.S., France, Italy, the Czech Republic, the U.K., Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, India, and Ireland. Books include The Aroma of Toast, Chopstix Numbers, and After Lunch with Frank O’Hara. Mr. Cotter’s manuscripts have been finalists for The National Poetry Series, the Tampa Review Poetry Prize, The Word Works Washington Prize, the Southern Missouri State University Press’s Cowles Prize and several others. www.craigcotter.com