#poetryfriday: dogs playing poker

It was bound to happen.  Eventually I would dredge up some memory from the past and it would work its way into something a little more serious. This week’s poem came to me while on a walk, with large sections of it coming to me at once. Of course, it would also happen when i didn’t have a notebook and would have to repeat those sections over and over until I could get home and commit them to memory. I’ve done that in the past with haiku, but these were much larger and I almost lost a line or two.

This being WordPress the formatting will be all wrong, but the lines will at least be sequentially correct. I should also warn, there is a single obscenity, repeated twice, for those who might be bothered by such things.

dogs playing poker

late july and august weekends
the men were up by ten
grandpa, dad, uncles
my aunt’s boyfriends of the moment
settled around the picnic table
on a separate patio in the backyard
shaded from the orange county sun
by grapevine walls and roof

five card stud, seven card draw
dealer’s call
jacks are better and
acey-deucy and
high-low and
indian poker
penny ante stuff
mountains of copper disks
surrounded by sweating tin towers
of schlitz
of miller
of olympia
of whatever was tall and on sale
down at ralph’s market

bored of saturday morning cartoons
we would drift out to the patio
allowed to stay if we kept quiet
if we’d take the empties away
if we could bring back fresh beers
without shaking them

the littler kids became mascots
tossing pennies into the pot
handling discards
learning to shuffle and deal
until they finally drifted away
leaving us older kids behind
to become adults

“i gotta talk to the man” and
“nature calls” and
“takin’ the lizard for a walk” meant
we could sit in for a hand or two
complete with name-calling, taunts
fake threats, accusations of cheating
and, if grandpa was at the table
the swearing initiation

grandpa, seven-foot-plus
handlebar mustache
tanned the color of stained oak
leather vest over a t-shirt always
the only man who ever wore the name ‘slim’
and could make it fit
insisted i call the bluffs
“say it”

i’d look around the table
uncles encouraging
boyfriends smirking
dad squinting
don’t you ever let me
catch you saying this at home
written on his face
“say it!” grandpa barked

“HORSESHIT!”

emboldened with excitement
washing back the aftertaste of swearing
with a bitter sip of beer
blanketed in howls and yelps of laughter
i knew at ten years old
i was officially a man

but
in the afternoon while the men napped
reclining on an old couch in the garage
beneath the painting of dogs playing poker
with a stolen shasta cola
i said the word again, a whisper

horseshit

memories of petting zoos and pony rides
adults pointing out nature’s land mines
road apples
horse biscuits
rump puckey
and what was so wrong about
that damp green smell of hay
sweet and warm and earthy
puzzling how these things
added up to calling someone

liar

all the while wondering
if the bulldog in the painting
was holding out or passing off
the ace secreted in his hind paw
under the table

Hey Diddle Diddle, it’s Poetry Friday on the Internets, and Anastasia over at Picture Book of the Day has this week’s round-up. Cut yourself in and watch out for the wild cards!

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