“My father once said…’you should wait till people are dead to tell stories like that.’
Now people are dead and I am telling stories like that.”—Martín Espada
My father smacked my mother in the breast with a softball
he pitched, a curveball the batter missed in the Pressed Steel
break yard where hell raisers on strike once fought company goons.
Nothing soft about that ball or their meeting as she let out a wail
clutching her chest, tears coursing cheeks at she shrieked “I see stars!”
And as that story goes, it was love at first sight, or so they said.
As he lifted her up from the ground and off her feet as she winced
from pain, it was like some meteor had flown off course to her heart
to make a moment, once you’ve had it, forgivable and unforgettable.
The rest of their lives would go that way beneath the constellations
of lost jobs and hard luck—Orion tightening the belt at food lines
and welfare visits to check on their two kids in a cold water flat.
A meteor disguised as a baseball brought them together in something
bigger than the two of them could have ever dreamed alone, but unlike
Cepheus and Cassiopeia they would not live on together forever.
He got lost in gambling and fighting and boozing, waiting for luck to turn
that never did. After his death, she, eyes glazed asked, as if I could know:
What did your father ever see in me? And I said, as if I knew: Stars in your eyes.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 1.
Andrena Zawinski’s third and recently released full poetry collection is Landings. Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com and founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon.
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