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Click hereWe never broke windows, just the two of us
most of June to the dog days of August.
You were the Yankees Tuesday through Friday;
three wiffs with the bat the inning was over;
and beefs were settled rock-paper-scissors.
We also agreed I would feed your dog
that bit me when you went on vacation.
My father said don't do it again
but changed his mind when he saw you mow
lawns nearly brown by that time of summer
to pay for the doctor and penicillin.
We swam with black boys at Queens Borough Pool
who my uncle said peed in the water.
"So what if they do? We all do too,"
you said in the waning days of summer
before you moved to Hastings on Hudson
by which time I was dreaming anyhow
of girls in bikinis at Coney Island.
Ira Goldfarb said four years later
you died that June from Hopkins Lymphoma.
So in so far I was old enough now
for part-time work and four letter words
I took the bus by myself to the Bronx
to watch the Yanks beat the shit outta someone
but only saw there in the field of my dreams
two boys from Queens with a wiffle ball.
and have never cared about this Yankee Dodgers spat, but this poem brings such vivid parallel memories- near vicinity, same era. I wouldn't change a word. I come back to this over and over again.
not buying, looks like a gratuitous insert. I might have bought if it were the Dodgers. It might have made more sense.
Perhaps 1201 doesn't understand American History enough to grasps the cynicism and tolerance you speak of.. I found this to be a great piece of adolescence in a time when the Yanks ruled and tolerance was evolving with in the youth! I dunno guess this is just my opinion! I gave it a 5
My intent was to establish a contrast between cynicism and tolerance represented in l2 and l3 in the stanza.
"I don't know what is the purpose to some of the sides, (as in pissin in the pool,"
context. setting. era.
a fleshing out...
I don't know what is the purpose to some of the sides, (as in pissin in the pool, unless it somehow relates to the Yankees beating the shit.. ) A5
it's really time you got a collection together and submitted it to an agent. if you haven't already.
you play with a reader's emotions with each write, taking them (i believe) where you, as author, would have them go. that's some skill. i'm happy for readers to go on a wander, but only because i lack the touch to direct them as smoothly as you do.
i like your use of straightforward language in this write, as it reflects the subject/narrator. no curlicues and folderols for effect; this is as simply strung (which is anything BUT simple) together as King manages with his stories: a reader gets to the end having experienced things, the language never having once got in the way to make us stub our toes.