Two Poems

Billiards

Say it’s Main Street
& I’m holding a black 8-ball
against the felt of my palm—

its heft could dent plaster.
Say I’ve shot tequila
off a baby changing table

in a public restroom. Say
I’m Metropolitan chic
all tight pants and white scarves

blowing across my face
as I strut to the tamale stand
toileting the bottom of California’s tank

where I grew up, girls
pregnant in high school
or just after, with or without

the child’s father,
our parents watching
our kids while we

down gin and vodka in someone’s backyard
while my man is screwing
someone else in the shed & I swore

I’d never find myself in this mess
but only fear of looking foolish
& pride & the baby

keep me from screaming
I’m not your fucking 1950s housewife, cabro?n
or breaking cue sticks

across my thigh, though sad enough
to raise public havoc.
I’m trying to remember

it’s not her fault but mine.
Say we’re all pawns in this game of bullshit.
Is this how it is where you live?

In the African story
the father is a magician with a wand and the son’s
a musician playing his flute.

That trickster father
makes cups disappear so that drinks
splash on faces

or pants suspend mid-thigh and cups shatter
to packed dirt. They’re sent away—
father and son, both outcasts.

Then a giant comes. At this point in the story
I’m thinking of how my child fell
from a fence and broke his wrists and

no one would help him. I mean, no one
was around to help. Or they’d fled the scene.
My boy. Limping home carrying his own hands

like dead fish at his arms.

Son and father lure the giant away
to the edge of the woods for it’s a story.
In stories, giants disappear.

Father and son are welcomed back. As saviors are.

Sunday heard this story as song on Reading Rainbow
when he was a boy
and had no father, no flute, no magic wand.

He bandages our boy’s wrists.
Shows him the scars on his own knees,
one in the shape of a hook, a crooked smile.

What were you running from, son?