Tag: drinking

Rebirth by Ellen Austin-Li

~ ONE ART ~ 9 Comments

Rebirth

It wasn’t an immediate awakening
after I had my first child, but a gradual

dawning, the way the night’s black sky lightens
to silver before hints of the sun appear

above the horizon, sooner than the streaks of gold
rising. There was the morning I woke

to a silent house, an empty crib. The gone baby,
removed by my husband for one night

not enough to pull me out of the chaos
of blackout drinking. The void of not knowing

what I had said, what I had done, how
the house could have burned down

with my son in it. The light entered
with my child’s return, and I added one

sober day to another, until I could remember
the sunrise and my need to see it.

*

Ellen Austin-Li’s debut poetry collection, Incidental Pollen—a 2023 Trio Award finalist and 2024 Wisconsin Poetry Series semi-finalist—is the runner-up to the 2023 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize from Madville Publishing. Finishing Line Press published her chapbooks Firefly and Lockdown: Scenes From Early in the Pandemic. Ellen is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee whose work appears in many places, including SWIMM, Salamander, The Maine Review, Lily Poetry Review, and ONE ART. Ellen holds an MFA in Poetry from the Solstice program. She lives in Cincinnati, OH, where she hosts Poetry Night at Sitwell’s. More info @ https://ellenaustinli.me/

Three Poems by Ann Kammerer

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Robin

We sat around
my kitchen table,
my brothers in town
for Christmas,
Mom and Dad
long divorced
and dead
for decades.

They talked about
high school.
They talked about
sports.
They talked about
being All-Region
in baseball,
and how
they could’ve been
All-State,
if only Mom
had married
someone else.

“We would’ve
been better,” Freddie said.

“Yeah,” Charlie said.
“We would’ve been
All-Stars.”

Charlie drank.
Freddie smoked.
They went
back and forth
calling Mom an idiot
for not marrying
a college player
named Robin Roberts,
a stand-out pitcher
recruited by the Phillies
and enshrined
in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“She dated him you know.”
Charlie leaned in,
his head tipped,
his eyebrows raised
just like Dad
used to do
when he tried
to make a point.

“I doubt it,” I said.
“Like Mom made
things up.
You know.
To get Dad mad.”

Freddie leaned in, too,
his jaw squared.

“She wouldn’t lie
‘bout that.” he said.

Charlie nodded.
He rapped the table
with his knuckles.

“Yeah,” he said.
“She wouldn’t do that.
Never.”

They fixed
on each other,
their eyes wide.

“Yeah,” Freddie said.
“It could’ve been perfect.”

Reseating their baseball caps,
they listed the keepsakes
they found tucked away
in Mom’s dresser drawer,
the college programs
with Roberts’ name underlined,
the ’49 rookie card,
the mint condition
Topps and Bowmans,
and the ‘53 baseball mag,
with “Wonder Boy” Roberts
on the color cover,
sizing up his pitch.

“She had
everything,” Freddie said.
“All his cards,
all those stories,
all those things
about him,
about his kids,
about his wife.”

Freddie paused.
He blinked and looked
out the window.

“Like that could’ve
been us,” Charlie said.
“Imagine it.”

Chugging their beers,
they opened two more,
saying they could’ve had
a star-quality Dad,
someone who taught them
how to throw,
catch, and hit,
someone who
coached them,
instead of a dad
in worn suits
and scuffed wingtips
who never even
tossed them a pitch
when they played ball
with neighbor kids
in a fenced back yard.

*

Curation

Mom needed money.
Dad wouldn’t give
her any.
He said she spent
whatever she got
on stupid things
instead of what
she should.

Her friend Charlotte
told her to have
a garage sale.
She said Mom
would be surprised
at how much money
she could make.

“People like to buy
other people’s junk,” she said.
“I’m sure your husband
has a lot of it.”

Mom emptied cupboards
and rummaged through
dresser drawers.
She pillaged closets
and dug deep
into crannies
and crawl spaces.
She gathered anything
deemed useless
or useful,
not caring
whose it was,
just as long
as it would sell.

“No one’s gonna miss
this stuff,” she said.
“Especially your brothers.”

Freddie and Charlie
had moved out
the summer I finished
seventh grade,
getting an apartment
and taking college classes,
vying to avoid
the Vietnam draft.
They left stuff behind,
their closets jammed,
saying they’d come get things,
as soon as they were ready.

“If they wanted
this crap so bad
they would’ve taken it,” Mom said.
“Finders Keepers, right?”

We cleared their closets
and set things on
the scuffed plank floor,
creating a line-up
of boxes and bags.

Mom split the tape
and opened
a small cardboard box
labeled “CHARLIE’S CARDS.”

“Well looky here.”
Her eyes reflected
a colorful collection
of rectangular cards,
the ones paid for
with nickels and dimes,
originally packaged
with a stale stick
of pink powdery gum.

“I betcha there’s
a Mickey Mantle
in here,” Mom said.
“Or a Willie Mays.”

She held up each card,
looking for bends
or worn edges,
making stacks
of MVPs,
sluggers,
and pitchers,
a few catchers
in between.
Lopsided frowns
crossed her face
as she discarded
dispelled prospects
and hopefuls
in a jumbled pile.

“Help me,” she said.
“Let’s see
what we got.”

I set down my Coke
and stood beside her,
a light breeze
carrying the roar
of the distant highway.
Our fingers nimble,
our eyes fixed,
we worked in sync,
silently sorting
the cardboard portraits,
a curated gallery
of young men
in pinstripes
and ball caps,
poised on green fields
against the bluest of skies.

*

Rookie

My brother Charlie
got fired from his sales job
after getting too drunk
at a Christmas party
and spouting off.

“My boss had it
in for me,” he said.
“Everyone says
it’s bullshit.”

Charlie sat around
for a month.
He went to bars
and sat around
some more.
He got drunk
and called me
all the time,
ranting about
his ex-wife,
ranting about
some college girl
he picked up,
calling her a slut.

“I don’t want
to hear it,” I said.

Charlie got foul mouthed.
I hung up.
He called back.

“Hey.
Listen to me,” he said.
You’re supposed
to be my sister.”

I hung up again.
He kept calling back.
I turned off the phone.

Six months later,
Charlie ran out
of money,
his prospects dry,
his savings thin.
His phone got
disconnected
so I went by his house,
the lawn overgrown,
the front door
kicked in.

I found him
in the back room
sunk in a vinyl recliner,
ringed by beer cans,
empty chip bags,
and crusted-over bowls
of beans and franks.

“Why you here?”
Charlie stared
at an ancient TV
coated with dust.
“The Tigers,” he said.
“They’re on.”

A sour smell
hung in the air,
the carpet squishy
beneath my feet.
I pulled over
a folding chair
and sat for a minute
on the torn sticky seat,
asking how he was.

He lifted his filthy ball cap
and smoothed his
gray-blonde hair,
his skin sallow
with tungsten light.

“Doing good,” he said.
He dunked his hand
in a Styrofoam cooler
filled with melting ice
and Miller Light.
“You know, though,
I still can’t believe it.”

He looked at me
and shook his head.
I asked him what.

“You know what.”
Charlie slurred,
starting in again
about his baseball cards,
how he could’ve
cashed them in,
been rich,
if only Mom
hadn’t sold them
at that garage sale
years ago
when he was away
at college.

“Man oh man,” he said.
“Mickey Mantle.
Rod Carew.
Hank Aaron.
Plus all those
rookie cards.
Goddamn her.”

Charlie picked
at the cracked vinyl
on the arms of his chair.
He bit his dry lip
and said yepper yep,
once, then twice.

“Goddamn it.”
Rising in his seat,
his eyes blistering,
Charlie threw his beer
as a Tiger struck out,
ending the inning
one run behind,
with two men stranded
on base.

*

Ann Kammerer lives in the Chicago area, having relocated from her home state of Michigan. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared or are coming in Fictive Dream, One Art, Open Arts Forum, Bright Flash Literary Review, Major 7th Magazine, Workers Write!, Chiron Review, Thoughtful Dog, and Ekphrastic Review, and in anthologies by Crow Woods Publishing and Querencia Press. Her chapbook collections of narrative poetry include “Yesterday’s Playlist” (Bottlecap Press, 2023), “Beaut” (Kelsay Books, 2024), “Friends Once There” (Impspired, 2024), and “Someone Else” (Bottlecap Press, 2024). You can find her here: annkammerer.com

Three Poems by Linda Blaskey

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Scarf

I’m driving home pleased with the gift I’ve purchased
for a friend when I see cedar waxwings lying so near
the edge of the road I am forced to steer toward the centerline.

They are drunk on the fermented berries of Fall,
some staggering about still.

My first husband, on the last day of his life—
we, divorced ten years—drunk-walked in the road

and was hit by a drunk driver, the two a better match
than we ever were.

The weave I have chosen is variegated colors of three
of a year’s seasons, because sometimes that is all we have.

*

Fox Skull by the Side of the Road

It’s bleached to a purity we don’t often see.
Teeth Hollywood white, the color we all strive for.

It has been here, by the mailbox, for months,
first intact then the slow disintegration, joint-sutures giving up their grip.

It’s all here, picked clean, scattered – parietal bone,
maxilla and mandible with canines and incisors fixed tight.

Despite the loss of interest by carrion eaters, despite deterioration,
there is something that rests uneasy, like the days
my skin doesn’t fit quite right.

I could gather the shards, toss them, but there’s vibration in such beauty
that tells me it, eyeless, wants to see this through to the end.

*

Paying for Lunch at the Arby’s Drive-Thru

The man is tall, with a tat below the sleeve of his tee.
When he leans his face close to the window to tell me
seven fifty-five, a lizard moves behind his eyes.
The small silver cross that adorns his ear hypnotizes
as he offers his change. I can feel it already—
the quarter, the dime, two nickels— the burn beginning,
the bite in the palm of my hand.

*

Linda Blaskey is editor at Quartet, an online poetry journal featuring the work of women fifty and over; poetry/interview editor emerita of Broadkill Review, and past coordinator of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2014, and numerous journals and anthologies. She is the author of the prize-winning chapbook, Farm, the poetry collection, White Horses, and co-author of Walking the Sunken Boards, and Season of Harvest. She is the recipient of three Fellowship Grants from DDOA, including the 2022 Masters in Literature: Poetry. She currently lives in Delaware.