scoreboard.
Mike knew more baseball than horseplayers
think they know about the Sport of Kings.)
The 11th race results are in
the background of the photo, 10-5-7.
On our memorial visit to the track,
we’ll stick to triple strategy,
agree to drop the cipher
when a field falls short, and alter
the trio when and if we spot a tip
from on high – horses boasting
coats the color of Linda’s raven
locks for example, luring sun
like a miniature Boston batting
helmet at Babe’s resting field once
sold full of ice cream at Fenway.
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Like A Charm
He rides horses:
the bleeders; the sore
and the cranky,
at racetracks that wake up
Triple Crown types in a sweat.
Every race is a Little Big Horn,
saddlecloths are tattered flags.
Sentimental folks
up to their dreams in hock
own these thoroughbreds.
Operating stations with offbeat gas,
lounges where light bulbs last forever,
greasy spoons and beauty parlors.
They swear they’ll quit
when a winner’s circle
photo lights up a wall.
This jock’s a leprechaun
with a bad reputation,
a careless ride away
from being ruled off or dead.
He uses the same dope as his mounts,
spits at betters who heckle.
Wearing dirty silks and scruffy boots,
he dreams of fog as thick as New
England chowder where hiding is easy —
let the others run the mile and seventy,
he’ll lay back, gallop a furlong and win.
As drunk in the saddle as on
the barstool he’s still able
to ditch a battery that’s jolted
a longshot to victory.
By God, he’ll lose his whip,
take a death grip on reins or fall
if he’s been ordered
to finish out of the money.
His best friend is a stormy waitress.
who has threatened his life.
Taking credit for all his winners,
she wears a horseshoe ring,
open end up so luck won’t drip.
Her jockey sports the scar of it
on his cheekbone like a charm.
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Landonoor
Jockey Trenger called
me “Scarecrow” honoring
the raggedy hat and clothes
I wore painting houses
back in seventy-one.
Once, while
he was playing gin
with a car salesman
at the Indian Lounge
I said I’d bet one
of his mounts earlier
that afternoon and he shouted
a few things that would
have sent a few flocks
of Christians flying
before he made me vow
never to bet another dime
on Landonoor who was tall
and looked like he moonlighted
pulling a Budweiser wagon
and lately racing like it.
Couldn’t figure out what my two
dollar wager was to Trenger but he closed
the deal the next day with twenty
bucks to paint some trim on his house.
Christ, it was such an easy job
I felt guilty and put on three coats.
I kept my word, wouldn’t even bet
against the gray, just retreated into
grandstand shadows,
one race every week or so
and stood as still as a scarecrow
moonlighting as someone
with sense.
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Sounds of Wilting
Only cheap room
I could find in Baltimore
was one to share at the YMCA.
My roommate who was from Colorado
had done time for attempted murder.
His last job out West had been watering
flowers at a nursery in Boulder.
He sang off a string of rose names
like an auctioneer.
His arms were tattooed floral
as Victorian wallpaper.
I was relieved to hear he’d become
a devout Jehovah’s Witness
while in prison as I was in town
for the Pimlico races
and my cash was under my pillow.
He wasn’t your average J.W. though,
didn’t waste a lot of time
on in-one-ear-and-out-
the-other sermonizing and never
offered a tract.
He said he could pick out those
who were so lonely they’d been praying
for a Witness to approach.
He’d learned the technique
his season of watering,
knew the roses most in need
even if they didn’t look it.
That was all he had to say to me.
I wondered if there would ever be
a day someone would mistake my bad
luck blues for that
kind of wilting.
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Iceland
The five minutes I spent
in the rack following Reveille
didn’t stack up to a hell of a lot.
At 18, I could survive a day of Navy Supply
School with one eye hangover shut.
But the Master At Arms had a favorite
word and it was “restriction.”
Wasting the next weekend hit me hard being
stationed in Newport just 40 miles from home.
What if the Navy sent me to Iceland
after graduation, exiled my ass two years or more?
Pawtucket weekends were precious, especially
with the horses running at Narragansett
that autumn of 1964 and drinking
Narragansett Lager into the Heights
Office Grass night.
Leo Tetreault had wheels and we’d pick up
Joe Morris at New England Paper Tube
where he knocked off at noon.
And maybe Mike Sherlock later on.
We always had extra cash to bet
the likes of Bold Stroke and Honest
Harry, Indian Relic and Time Tested
since we never paid admission merely
scaled barbed wire like the stretch
of it visible from the barracks windows
that I considered leaping at least
every minute of that eternal weekend.
It was hell with all the mustering
nonsense combined with worry
over missing a lucky day at the track
not to mention falling behind
a weekend’s drinking and camaraderie.
It was as if that vigilant Master
At Arms had connections that would ship
my ass to Keflavic and have my dinner
chow drugged daily with knockout drops
the way I fended off illicit sleep.
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Portraits
At Rock’s Bar, I’m telling
Buzzy Gordon about
the painting of Seabiscuit,
Red Pollard in the irons,
enshrined at Saratoga.
Buzzy, no stranger to race
riding himself, says
the Cougar bends his elbow
at the Newport Avenue Bar.
“Bet he’d just say,
‘you had to be
there, kid,’” I say,
and Buz
zy shrugs.
It strikes me then
it’s worth the trip
just for future bragging rights
maybe an autograph.
Quicker than Seabiscuit
once leapt from racing fan lips,
I’m parked on the Avenue
and through the door.
With the Spa image still fresh,
he’s post parade easy to spot,
and the motion of his drink
then cigarette is fluid and dreamy
like a jockey in a film
slowed to settle a race dispute.
And then like a rider cleared
of any and all charges
he’s seated straight and still
as if in that Saratoga painting.
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The Clocker
Narragansett Park
He rarely smiled,
never held a stopwatch
yet he called himself a clocker.
His tip sheets were canary yellow
like his lucky sport jacket
30 years ago at Hialeah
when he’d picked 7 longshots
in one day.
His selections were quickly
printed in a rundown trailer
not far from Narragansett
as soon as he got the scratches.
Ink was always smudged,
his hand press was so ancient.
After a decent afternoon,
2 or three winners,
maybe the double,
he’d circle the horses’ names
on the tip sheets that remained
with a laundry marker so strong
the odor made him high.
He’d pay Project kids who hung around
the track instead of school a buck or so
for distribution.
Aware his help tossed his advertising
down sewers but luck’s so rare
even an old man not on a laundry marker
high might cherish sharing good fortune
with rats, teeth yellow as a 7
winner sport jacket event.
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Hustler Ballet, 1968
Pinstripe suited Con
Errico nods
to his chauffeur
holding the midnight
blue Cadillac door.
At weekday quiet
Lincoln Downs
Errico wins the first,
places in the second.
A salesman who wheeled
Scotch Phar with
all for a Daily
Double victory
celebrates, buys
a fur-coated hustler a drink
at the Clubhouse bar.
Her heels are so high
she sometimes thinks
she’s cheating at ballet.
The salesman tells her
Errico’s career has been
plummeting since he took the Palm
Beach with Crafty Admiral in ’52.
“Plummeting?” she asks,
snapping her compact shut.
“You mean he pulls
when he should be pushing?”
“And vice versa,” adds the salesman.
“We like his name, don’t we
handsome?” asks the hustler,
smiling as if “plummeting”
is a promising new ballet
and her new partner won’t
last long on his toes
no push or pull required.
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Music, Narragansett Park
He’s so low to the ground many fans miss him.
He’s been working the clubhouse gate
so long, people are used to his legless form.
In truth, race goers tend to dwell on other pins.
The way he sits on a skate-wheeled pedestal
reminds some of a museum bust.
He offers pencils for sale, noon to four.
Betters buy for luck not necessity, hope
the yellow wands