Its Ghostly Workshop: Poems

Double

59 Double for John Barelli Three and a half decades now and my heart still tightens because I’m trotting giddy toward checkout in the Old Gothic Gym, my precious punch cards fanned like a royal flush— Ryle, Russell, Beckett, Kant, Fielding—when they vanish up into a huge fist stared at by Coach Dole, autocrat of linebackers and foghorn stupid. How long does it take to read “PhilLang,” “Epistemol,” “BritNov,” ContemDram,” “Aesthtics,” and whatever? When his eyelids droop, something with sharp fins banks in my stomach. My face burns. “Smitty,” he fogs down at one of the cards, “Can’t take this class. Be late to practice on Wednesdays.” A ceiling fan helicopters his head like Vulcan’s halo. My entire aching life holds its stinking breath. “That’s the Senior Seminar in my major,” I say. He pushes those big, empty eyes at me. “Change your major,” he says. “Major in sociology like Dimmski and Dollard.” In this memory I reach up in silence like Augustine stealing a pear from paganism; I pluck my cards from the fat fist; I wade through the heat to the long table near the door. I have bled, benchpressed, blindsided, wildcatted, wedgebusted, whacked, crunched, crashed, crapped in my pants at practice, pissed in forth-quarter huddles, piled on and been piled up, been All-American stomped and gouged. I have farted in my own face. I have bounced my brain 60 against my own skull, have squatted, squashed, broke-down, bearcrawled, duckwalked, slashed, swooped, and by God levitated, I have trapped, kicked out, blitzed, and firestormed. I have forearmed ferocious forever, eternally bang-up butted, have split giant triple teams, lips, chins, supraorbital ridges, sprinted and wheezed and puked and puked and sweated and puked for ten fall seasons, year-round training, seven hellish, heroic springs. Though you zombie the zone of the well-rung bell, though they stitch you all over like Shelley’s Monster, though you break the breakable, sprain the sprainable, dislocate the dislocatable, it is best to keep your swollen mouth shut and play the hand Mars and Minerva have dealt you. None of the coaches ever spoke again of my education. In 1970 I came fifteen minutes late to practice one day a week and slipped on down the linemen list. But, I told myself, I’ve still got Philosophy and British Literature. I thought my double major was my secret, my ace in the hole. ...