Safe at Home by Glen Brown

 

                                  

We’re playing under a blinking street lamp
and a few luminous city stars.
First base is a sewer cover
where Race Street line-drives into Elizabeth.
Second base is Michael Petrelli’s Dago-tee.
Third base is my dad’s plumbing rag,
and home plate is my mom’s dish towel.
The ball is a crushed waxed-papered cup
filled with pieces of rubber,
and the bat is the handle
of a whisk brush broom.
Pitcher’s hands are out.
There are no foul lines, except
for street curbs, and anything that hits
Andante’s grocery store awning is a homer.
In my mind, I’m playing in Comiskey Park
at 35^th & Shields against the Yankees.
My cleats are high-top Converse sneakers
with Little Louie’s number 11
Sharpied on the white rubber toe caps.
The game is tied,
and my mom is broadcasting
“Get your ass home” signals
through the window blinds.

But I’m in a pickle: there are two outs,
and Jo-Jo Lucenti is on third.
I know I’ll never launch one, even though
I point just like the Babe in 1932,
and I flash the hit-and-run sign instead
and lay down a bunt
that drops like a chipped marble.
And I run faster
than the “Commerce Comet,”
then all the way home, faster
than herky-jerky Duncan can run
after bearing down on me with his sinker,
and faster than my mom’s countdown from ten,
where at the top of the hallway stairs
of our cold-water flat, she asks me
where her dish towel is.
I tell her it’s safe at home.

 

From my recent collection of poems entitled, "Hum If You Can't Sing"