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Click title to open microchap
Cover collage by JanK
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A WINNING PARLAY
“Can two losers make a winning parlay?”
That’s how my father proposed to my mother.
I guess the answer was yes and they were off to the races.
I told this to a friend, and she objected:
That was an insult to call your mother a loser.
A gambler doesn’t see it that way.
No, he was saying they both had seen a lot of bad luck.
There was enough bad luck to go around in the 1930s.
She didn’t take it personally; she took it as a question.
Can two people with bad luck merge and have good luck?
You see for a gambler, it’s always about Luck.
He is a loser because luck left him.
Remember that old song,
Was it by Frank Sinatra?
“Luck be a Lady Tonight”
There’s one funny line:
“Stay with me Lady
I’m the one that you came in with.”
Ghazal Ask a Gambler
My father called me “Countess Fleet” WHY? Just ask a gambler.
Count Fleet won the Derby; my father had him to win. Ask a gambler.
By the time I was born in July Count Fleet had won the triple crown
my father had him in all three races. No mean task, a gambler.
That was a winning year, I was his good luck charm.
He called me Countess Fleet. Don’t even ask a gambler.
My mother hated the fact that he taught me to read the Racing Form
Before I was three, we listened to the races on the radio. Can’t mask a gambler.
One time my mother left me in his care while she went shopping.
Coming up stairs, she heard us shout “Come on Faultless!” my task as a gambler.
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GHAZAL STILL IN THE GAME
Down to his last dollar, Dad found a lucky slot, still in the game.
Behind in the relay, I heard him shout: Run! you're still in the game.
My first dance was at someone's wedding, amazed to be asked.
I pranced onto the floor; my sister joined in a quadrille in the game.
When the horse race is over, punters throw away losing tickets.
My father picked them up to check: Louisville in the game
My best friend brought her grandson over-- brilliant seven-year-old.
He tried to tell me about playing everything with skill in the game
When BB King sings that the thrill is gone for good.
He's telling us about pain and how we lose the thrill in the game.
Romeo killed himself after he found Juliet. Family feud.
Two children dead in the tomb that was overkill in the game
A boxer falls on the ropes or clinches his opponent to catch his breath.
He came out swinging; by the tenth round he's over the hill in the game.
Can we lose all and still be alive and pining for love? Who knows?
We touch in the dark, time wastes us; elders grow shrill in the game.
If someone tells you that God is dead, there is no heaven. Death ends all.
Mocks that you cannot prove His existence. He's just a shill in the game.
When they went uphill, he “fell down and broke his crown”.
Norma came tumbling after -- no Jack or Jill in the game.
“Now is the winter of our discontent,” seven ages have played.
Till it stops and throws us off, we run on this treadmill in the game.
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Norma Coleman Jenckes © 2022
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Click title to download microchap
Cover collage by Jan Keough
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Push On
Last night I dreamed you were working a tiller
mixing compost, breaking clods, turning ground,
pausing to grab and toss big stones you found.
Wild dump behind the old laundry, filler,
smoking trash, half-rotted refuse, Miller
beer cans. Scary ghosts, rats, tires, kittens drowned.
Why are we here? Why till this greasy mound?
“Don't cry,” you said “watch me, easy, stand stiller”
Are you stiller now? Drank yourself to death.
Hated those calls you ended by saying:
“I'll see you, baby, on the other side,”
your double-edged sign off. Ran out of breath,
your hollow laugh when I went on playing:
“Not if I see you first,” kid's taunt. I lied.
Picking The Winners
My father loved to talk about horses.
He taught me how to read the Racing Form
at three. Laughing and writing up a storm,
making prolific notes, which race courses
the colt ran well, which jockey forces
the pace or uses the whip more than norm.
"The track," he laughts, "the only place to reform “
bums to scholars weighing gains and losses."
I read the stats: gates, jockeys, trips and odds.
He comments on each: loves a fast track,
good in the mud, blinders, great late speed,
pace setter, then colt fades; bad trip, he nods.
That big grey long-shot may fade in the back
stretch, jockey has soft hands." That's all we need.
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What The Blossoms Say
”Would you jump into my grave that quick?“
Irish colloquial saying -
Nothing buds say about April will bring
him back. Jonquils to rake, roses to prune,
cut back berry bramble, clear rings
around cherries and apples fruiting soon.
Bird song, bulb tips don't stir me to action;
sparrows chirp their old refrain, their frantic
his last distraction. -- trips to houses he built
Alone, I stop to watch their nesting antics.
We'd laugh, as raucous jays snatched their fill
of fruit, before he climbed to pluck our share.
Who cares if cherry trees bear fruit and spill
blossoms? That day one fell on his black hair.
Some Spring I will see cherry blossom snow,
and not turn to catch his eyes reflect that glow.
Topophilia
Name it: the love of earth that hurls through time
more change, no stops. We see all fall and rise
now sand, now wind, now you, who loved to climb
stil fly - - your dust re joins the cosmic disguise.
We seek comfort -- but it's empty and cold
solace. I fear the void where we are flung
and thank the earth that hides the facts: how bold
the arcs that seasons, sun and stars have hung,
Today my friend made plans to meet in June
” if we're above ground still “ her spouse amends,
we laughed, then stopped. I thought that's earth's boon:
her spin seems stopped. When children roll downhill
between sky and earth, the ground keeps truth at bay:
but clouds scud by and give the game away.
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Norma Coleman Jenckes © 2018
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Cover from ‘Portrait of an Unknown Woman’
1527—Joos Van Cleve
The Uffizi Gallery, Florence
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Take The Long Count
You are going to get knocked down.
Yes, you are, life will knock you down.
You just over swing — lose your balance
Trip yourself up—sure he’s also pounding on you.
But you meet the canvas.
Don’t jump to your feet to show that
You can—that it was all some bad mistake.
No, lay there, take the long count, stay still
Breathe, enjoy the little rest.
At eight begin to get up very slowly
Stand and shuffle a bit, let the Ref
Look you over, check you out.
Don’t run towards the guy
Who is dying to finish you off.
You’re finished with dying.
ENJOY THE RIDE
After we vacuum, change the sheets,
supper on fish chowder,
make pies and turnovers
rolled from left over dough and apples,
my Aunt Grace and I watch Friday night fights.
My father comes up from
Uncle Charlie's bar downstairs
where he played cards all evening.
We settle down with our milk and pie slices
listened as he called each punch and foot work
like the boxer he was:
Glass jaw! Rubber legs!
Uppercuts, left jabs, winning combinations...
Keep your fists up!
all shouted out at the tiny screen of early TV.
Later we got into the old DeSoto
with the choke that coughed.
I shivered, prayed and it caught.
My mother had warned me about driving home;
she thought he drove too fast
as we went down darkened Weeden Street
over the dip of the bridge,
the bump of the railroad tracks
I felt the car leave the ground
and started mouthing the Hail Marys,
rolling the hidden beads between my fingers
in my coat pocket.
He caught on and took one hand off the wheel
and put it around my shoulders.
“Don't go through life scared and mumbling,”
he laughed,
“just sit back and enjoy the ride.”
And I did.
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AT THE STARTING GATE
Yes, we were often in a bar or tavern
Or tap and I was with my dad.
He would offer to get some bread or milk
or meat for supper and bring me along
to allay any fears my mother had
that he would go astray.
What was astray to him?
Cards, poker, a bar with a card game
in the back room.
I would be part of the package
I loved being taken out
for a ride and then a quick run
Into a dim cool place.
Usually I sat up at the bar,
drained a fizzy soda with a big cherry on top
while he would turn over 3 cards.
Then win or lose, we’d jump back into the car;
grab the needed groceries
from a neighborhood store.
One time it must have gone on beyond 3 cards
me sitting on somebody’s lap...
Maybe I complained about his breath
or his smell or the way his beard scratched my neck.
My father took me up, stroked my hair,
Darling, -- he said-- that man is close to
the finish line and he is stumbling a bit.
He wasn’t always like that--
You should have seen him at the starting gate --
He was magnificent.
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Norma Jenckes © 2014
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Norma Coleman Jenckes returned to Pawtucket, her hometown, after three decades teaching at the University of Cincinnati. She has written and published poetry since college and has most recently been experimenting with forms.