Slinky
By Alan Catlin
I have this terrible dream,
we’re at grandmother’s house
on the second floor landing,
someone else, on his knees starts
a Slinky down the first step
and three later, a baseball.
These are not children, they
are men and I know money is
changing hands, big money
And then someone drops a
tennis ball. I can’t figure
out the handicapping system
but it sounds like everyone
else knows and there’s a
huge crowd looking over
the railings of grandma’s
stairs creating a terrible
noise and boy is she going
to be pissed, if she ever
finds out about this.
And, then, I see this guy
with the boomerang No, No,
I scream, that will break
the front hall door windows
and just like that, I’m somewhere
else, at Sunset Bowl, and I gutter
my first shot in the eighth frame
of my third game knowing it’s double
or nothing for all those guys behind
me with nothing else to do
on a Saturday afternoon but
to drive in from Brooklyn
to bet bowling on the Island.
Alan Catlin has published well over seventy chapbooks and full-length books since the 80s. His latest full-length poetry books are Asylum Garden: after Van Gogh from Dos Madres and Lessons of Darkness from Luchador Press.