Poem Bale Three Regarding Horseplayer Luck & Lack
Thomas M. McDade
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
