Frank Van Zant
Father of three, teacher of near dropouts, and coach, his first book,
The Lives of the Two-Headed Baseball Siren is out from Kings Estate Press,
and he can be reached at veezee@staffordnet.com.
Chin Music
Oh sure
I once dedicated
a poem
to the old sonofabitch
about our one stunning
ballfield memory
but the truth is
we had exactly that:
one, one
game of catch
(my regular father-companion
a metalframe pitchback)
still, the old dad did me
right
one time
that time I was sailing dirt bombs
at my sister and her friend, our neighbor
dirt bombs flying
like brown baseballs
poofing into the strike zones
of the curb, the sidewalk, the street
merely near them
like chin music
when that neighbor girl’s scary father
Mister Hyde (I swear!)
came storming
by surprise
across the street
across my yard
WITH A BAT
so I lit out
around the side yard
and started pounding
for DAD DAD DAD
on the doorwindow
which smashed
like a fastball upside the head
(Do you remember blood
your very first time?)
me there, bleeding
between my alerted father
and misterjeckyljerkoffhyde
who was still holding that piece of wood
I WANT TO TALK TO THIS BOY
he said
No, I don’t think so, not today,
not like this
said dad, with a calmness and strength
I never knew he had
he was like Cy-freaking-Young
on the mound of that sideyard porch
staring down that wouldbe hitter
with poise, logic, control
even Robert Francis’ pitcher
would’ve learned
Notes On The State Of My American House, Summer ‘99
I.
The 3-yr-old’s Teletubby doll
squeezed, says La La La Big Hug
but I say it sounds like
La La La Sig Heil
II.
The vacuum cleaner saleswoman lies
about the service contract
providing new hoses
every year. The repair shop
claims that’s impossible
because they don’t DO new hoses, the sales-
liar says it says so
right here, I say
I’m hosed. The hoses
suck.
Nothing.
III.
My roof once leaked one simple
drop of water through
one small nail hole.
Fred Flintstone once remarked on a rerun
how this tiny rivulet he and Barney were watching
would become the Grand Canyon’s Colorado
drop by drop, in a million years.
My roof is like a cartoon
only faster.
IV.
The President of these great
United States
is like my vacuum cleaner and my roof,
hosing and leaking.
V.
My boss tells me
during impasse in my union’s contract negotiations
that people who do my job
in Montana
are making half my pay.
This makes me want to move to Thailand
where I could earn even less, work
in a slave factory.
CEOs are CEOs because they’re always right,
worth 1000 times what workers are worth.
Therefore, I’m now thankful
for the $ I don’t earn
because I would just spend it anyway.
On a roof. A vacuum.
My children.
Something useless.
VI.
My wife, hallowed
soccermom of our three blessed angels,
says we should take the children to church.
To pray for what?
CEO slaughters?
Better economy for the CEOs?
Soccer trophies?
I say she might be right.
I need a service contract from god,
that great salesentity,
to ease my dantean decline into cynicism,
to cover my eternal ass.
a little electoral reminder.
5-4
5 is a hand, the fingers extended, pressing together,
the hand swinging, with historical impunity, slapping a woman,
5 is laughter, a scorned suffragette
5 is Separate But Equal born again, five
Jim Crows squawking and fighting, tearing at flesh
5 is George Wallace standing in front of a school,
Dred Scott revisited
5 is three fifths of a person, 5 is a land-owning
white, male, h-e-t-e-r-o-s-e-x-u-a-l
5 is relocation camps, reservations
The Trail of Tears, Sand Creek
5 is The Only Good Homosexual Is A Dead Homosexual
5 is the reasoning of
This Is Why This Kind Of Person Deserves
banishment, punishment, retribution
from God’s eyes through man’s justified hands,
the original weapons, closed like a mind or policy,
fists for delivering a settled argument
5 is a firing squad, ethnic cleansing
a pentacle, a satan star
Frank van Zant