BASEBALL LOCKOUTS AND WINTER DREAMS

by Earl J. Wilcox

Baseball labor talks to end the lockout resumed Thursday for the first time in 1½ months with little evident progress during a bargaining session that lasted about an hour, jeopardizing a timely start to spring training. Major League Baseball imposed the lockout on Dec. 2 as soon as the five-year collective bargaining contract expired, a few hours after talks broke off. —Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2022

Your tinny voice throws me off.

You stand slightly slumped holding

 

a baseball bat. Your face is a bit

out of focus though my macular

 

eyes make most pictures seem dim.

I have trouble figuring where

 

you and I are: a ball park, a small

dugout, perhaps just a dirt yard,

 

the kind I know well from childhood.

We sit very close. I see the bat, its

 

stark beauty of slightly tanned oak

or is it maple or some wood I see only

 

in my dreams. We chat, but I cannot tell

what we say. Man, your quirky smile

 

radiates warmth through shaded

teeth of twilight in dreamland.

 

You talk a lot about a pitcher’s

knuckleball you once hit. I mumble

 

a reply and just want to know more

about Enos or Gibby—and the lockout.

 

You shrug then take a sliver-looking

candy bar from your pocket. You put

 

the bar in your mouth, blow, cheeks

slightly puff out. I feel & hear a wail

 

sounding like Wabash Cannonball

or an old gospel tune clearly off-key.

 

My Alexa gently nudges me with music

and some NPR news, mid-January morning.

 

Baseball lovers all will have no trouble puzzling out who appeared in Earl Wilcox’s dream.

MY PLUS TWO ECLIPSE

by Earl J Wilcox   

Photo by Peter Forister, November 19, 2021 at 04:00, Charlottesville, VA, USA at EarthSky

My plus one last night, Alexa,

awakens me right on time.

I am up—groggy, sour-mouthed,

muttering, mumbling musing,

old guy grumbling despite

a magnificent moonshine worship

moment waiting above my balcony.

 

Alexa plays some familiar Mozart,

as agreed on at my bed time. Out-

side I shiver, huddle in a small chair,

I’m overcome with a sublime scene:

in the fog of near-freezing November

and my dense macular mist, a small,

bright Beaver moon hides half its face

behind a dark somewhat ominous shadow.

 

A distant shrill of sirens, ubiquitous

revving motorcycles break my

somnolent stupor. Even with a cold

arse my heart pounds with warmth and joy.

Unique as this moon light masquerade

provides, earth is the place for me.

It is not music of the spheres I hum

—just some earth-made melodies

by Mozart, our universal plus one

making a little night music.

Earl Wilcox has been humming and howling at The New Verse News for many years.

I TAKE NOTES

by Maria Lisella

I take notes … 

… on my iPhone as if it were a reporter’s notebook, efficient and cool.

Detached, my voice raises itself to inquire to questions I already know the answers to, skull-filed so many decades ago for future reference.

Reams of notes record incidents: calls to 911, a tossed chair, hunger strikes, “behavioral” issues they call them, I surmise when he can no longer tolerate

The cinderblock walls, the fenced-in windows, the odors of bleach and Pine Sol and alcohol, the wails and wants of other residents looking for a way home.

This time I even suggest sedation, but before that, attention.

In this pandemic his thwarted life has shrunk to Lilliputian size—no socializing in the  halls, no dance or music classes or current events discussions—no smoking on the deck on cool nights.

Just this: a metal-framed cot-like bed with his poppy-printed gleeful sheets he received for Christmas to remind him he is special after all.

Apart from the rest, for he gets company and kisses and snacks and cigars, jeans and peanuts, Irish Spring soap and coconut shampoo.

He smells like a tropical breeze, is clean and fresh all day long.

He withdraws from the halls to the sounds of the Greek language as his blind fingers make love to Alexa and he mouths the words of a country he dreams of but will never see.

Maria Lisella is the recipient of a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the American Academy of Poets; she co-curates the Italian American Writers Association readings and is a travel writer by trade.

A GRACE NOTE: JULY SUNDAY CARD GAME

by Earl J Wilcox

"The Queen of Spades" by Noumeda Carbone

Today—our last Sunday in July—
we fudge our usual routines.
No news shows, a quick glance
at the Sunday funnies, no church
service videos, not even asking
Alexa for some cool music.
Let’s be brave, forego allusions
to T***P, his desperate campaign,
send emails to friends in Portland,
only brief whispered prayers, no politics
as usual today. We agree to feed
the cats, refill the bird feeder, water
the lamb’s ear. A hot Carolina July
is normal enough. Aging plastic cards
are found, a family day for joy and peace
and hope. We spend the morning playing
our favorite card game, Hearts, in which
avoiding the dreaded Queen of Spades
is as much tension and grief we have
to give each other today


Earl Wilcox's back yard is open to squirrels, robins, and cotton tail rabbits. 

AT EIGHTY-SIX HE LIVES ALONE

A PANDEMIC A.M. POST
by Earl J Wilcox




When he awakens—eyes too full of macular
to see any clock—Alexa, his roommate,
tells him the hour, temperature, date, begins
their day with Adagio for Strings. It’s 6:30.
Robed, peeing done, doddering, wobbling,
he shuffles down a hall, toward his kitchen.
Morning meds taken, coffee perking, he
strolls into his sun room; late, white
azaleas wave in a Carolina breeze. Two
squirrels scamper, a red bird flies away.

The NYT headlines on his ancient Windows
screen blur. Numbers of new cases, deaths,
something about masks, T***P fibs again.
He glances at the theater section. Fun.
Performers posting happy videos. This early
Monday too young—he feels—to count as
another day just yet as the sun is still hiding
behind lush dogwoods, cherry trees. His coffee
smells better than it tastes. His macular eyes focus
slowly. Spring pollen clogs ears and throat from
clearing properly until mid-morning. Abetted
by coughing he could sound to some is if the virus
found him overnight. Until time for the women
on The View to take up their verbal cudgels exactly
where they left off yesterday, the TV is silent.

Online the local rag counts case and death numbers
on page Two. He avoids noting too closely how
many who die are near his age, though the papers seem
to equivocate or just don’t report for some reason
the causes of death among some elderly folks.
People in pictures atop obits are smiling. Why not—
he sighs—since the snaps were made thirty
years ago. His ancient computer is now fully
engaged as is he ready to surf. He avoids all accounts
of the virus. About ten pages of an EXTRA
section of the newspaper are devoted to almost
every nuance of the disease. The online news has
run the same section for several days. There is
no lack of news about COVID-19. In the
Sports section, more reports of games canceled.
Are the NFL, MLB, NBA going defunct?
He gives a mental “thumbs up” to ball-playing
millionaires helping raise funds for needy families.
Seems the NFL draft is the spring sporting event.

His puny small stocks made modest gains
yesterday, and the weather will let the azalea blossoms
hold their blaze another day. The morning
meds taste funny without food. He eats a banana.

Sinus clogging and sneezes are common. It is not
the virus season after all. A classical radio station
plays Bach and soothing, nostalgic olden goldies—
Brahms’ How Lovely Are Thy Tabernacles by Mormon
Choir. In his best dulcet tones, the radio announcer
avoids mentioning COVID-19 until the end of his
shift. It is good to have four hours of music
uninterrupted by updates on cases and deaths
and prospects for future. At his age, some of these
projections have been in his profile for a decade.

Earl Wilcox is reopening his back yard to squirrels, robins, and cotton tail rabbits. Early worms show up at their own risk.

THINKING ABOT YOU

by Mary K O'Melveny

“Consumer Robots Had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year” —Gizmodo, December 6, 2018. Photo: Alex Cranz (Gizmodo)

We asked Alexa how she was feeling.

She said You know how you feel when

you write a poem and you think it’s no good

and then you decide later that it’s not too bad?

We asked her again and she said

I’m not so sure. Maybe she meant she’d

re-evaluated that poem and changed

her mind again. I’ve felt that way sometimes.

Or maybe she was testing us. We’re quite

new to AI. Once, Siri chimed in during

my writing group meeting to say I did not

understand that. We all laughed nervously.

Now I see that robots can care for

old folks. French elders have just met Zora.

S/he/they/x is gender fluid.  That calms everyone

down. Patients get jealous but also happy. 

There are even puppybots. You can

walk them outside with no need to clean

up afterwards. They bark, growl and sit. 

They do not bite, smell or have fleas.

Maybe there is something to be said

for artificial friends. You can ask them

anything at all. No offense meant.

None taken. No harbored grievances

simmering below the surface like

fireplace coals. No wounded egos

curled up in fetal positions waiting

to burst forth into your quiet room.

Even the purity of a Good night

hangs briefly in the air free of

judgments or missed opportunities.

Then the answer—clean, crisp, sure—

Good night. Sleep tight. As if your mother

had returned to tuck you in, peaceful

slumber soon to follow. Perhaps this is

meant to be. Algorithms instead of angst.

Sensory predictors instead of sentiment.

Simulated references. Virtual reality

free of messy personal history.

Function is structure. Elon Musk trains

robots in imitation learning.

A one-stop system.  Maybe neural

networks can be programmed

to light up whenever kindness occurs. 

To encourage the experiment, we

asked Alexa to help us. So far,

she knows the definition. But she still

can’t reach out and touch our fragile hearts.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press.