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Twelve
and best friends,
we both saved
our weekly allowance
to buy magic tricks.
You'd bring a catalogue
from the local magic shop to school,
and at lunch hour
we'd peruse the pages together;
the sleight-of-hand effects,
coin routines and gimmicked decks,
jugs that never stopped pouring,
boxes with false bottoms,
Houdini escapes.
Those days,
my parents were always fighting
behind locked doors.
Yours had split years before.
The week you got your license
your father bought you a Tercel—
an orange tin can.
We drove around the city late at night,
stuffed ourselves with steamies and fries
at the local greasy spoon
and talked.
You loved a girl from school,
didn't reveal the secret.
She wanted you as a friend.
You hoped
for someday.
I slept with her
when you were away at college.
Told myself
she wasn't yours to lose.
We tried to hide it—
used misdirection.
When you came home
you didn't leave your bed for months
or answer the phone.
A vanishing act
behind closed curtains.
Then one day
you appeared
in your shit-box car.
We went driving.
I thought we'd talk about our futures
like old times.
"I'm going to turn pro," you said.
"Turn pro at what?"
"Tennis. I'm going to be a tennis pro."
"But you don't play tennis,"
I said.
"I've seen Borg,
I can beat him."
“That’d be quite a trick,”
is all I said.
7 comments:
Disjointed piece; I don’t quite get it. Interesting build-up to where you had your friend’s “love”. Couldn’t be considered cheating but a betrayal of friendship. How do guys handle it isn’t made clear. (Girls would never speak to each other again.) Where was the resolution about the girl with your friend?
Sometimes life can be disjointed. And without resolution.
This is the first time I disagree with Rachel, and I guess this is kind of poem that would facilitate that! I think this is a great narrative, even if it is perhaps a bit disjointed. It's a good story with good characters. I have a clear mental image of each scene, of each of the characters, the magician paraphernalia, the shitbox car, the "steamies", all of it. Mind you, I don't relate to any of the characters (not even the narrator!), but I definitely feel like I know them. Ultimately, I think it's a poem about magic and the limits of magic. No amount of magic will bring your parents back together, or make the girl that doesn't like you like you, or make you into a tennis star when you don't even play tennis. Although "Turning Pro" is a great title, I might have titled it "The Limits if Magic".
I think of it as a poem about growing up - sort of a euphemism for ‘turning pro’. It’s about expectations, losing your innocence. And it’s also about mental illness.
That the background is mysterious is an understatement. I started writing another poem and then this one took over. I became swamped with memories of a dear childhood friend who moved away decades ago and who I'd had only very rare contact with as we went about our lives ever since. The last contact was many years ago. For a day I was overwhelmed by memories, hence the poem. Shockingly, the very next day I opened my inbox and there was a message from him. I can't think of another time when he sent me an email - our rare contacts had been by messenger, and I haven't had messenger for more than 5 years.
Crazy that you heard from him the next day! Life sometimes works like though. Going pro as a metaphor for growing up ... nice! The fact that he/you/we have no training whatsoever but still want to grow up is so true and ironic. No one gets the guidebook for growing up! I still think that magic is the theme of the poem ... that we magically want to grow up against all odds.
That week I had three distinct occasions of premonition, or precognition, or whatever it's called. Others call it coincidence I suppose. But truly uncanny inexplicable ones. That was the most surprising. You can hardly call it coincidence. Like me telling you what card you will select from a deck, and then you pulling that exact card, 1 in 52 chance, without me doing sleight of hand. Yes, magic is the central metaphor for sure.
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