Al Ortolani

The Fifteen Dollar Vacation

Two teachers on winter break access Netflix

and download all five seasons of Breaking Bad.

She makes popcorn and he brings in a 12-pack

from the garage. Somewhere in season two

he lights his father’s calabash and stokes it

with the stash he found in the evergreen

across the street. They dim the lights and put the set

on mute. Like kids, they text secret messages

to each other, phones on vibrate. He wakes after

midnight to the wind—tree limbs tapping the siding,

sighing as snow runs the eaves, corners

the chimney. She is still sleeping, the blue throw

pulled up to her chin. The couch is narrow—

the remote control lost in the cushions.

CP

Al Ortolani is a public school teacher in the Kansas City area. His poetry and reviews have appeared in New Letters, The Quarterly, The English Journal, New York Quarterly and other fine places. He has published several books of poetry: The Last Hippie of Camp 50 and Finding the Edge, from Woodley Press, Wren's House, from Coal City Press, and Cooking Chili on the Day of the Dead, from Aldrich Press. He is an editor for The Little Balkans Review and works closely with the Kansas City Writer's Place.

Al Ortolani

Following Junkyard *

My father, as athletic trainer,

let me tag the sidelines

with a small plastic doctor’s bag.

He loved the scrappers, tough guys

busting for a fight—my favorite

was Junkyard, Vietnam bound,

half-concussed, fingers taped

in make-shift splints. As free safety,

Junkyard was the forlorn hope.

Small, but wiry, he launched

his body like a bola, like a sling,

like a helicopter prop.

I followed Junkyard all season

with rolls of tape, nylon-wrapped

smelling salts, and a strange

plastic corkscrew which

when wedged between teeth

could pry open a locked jaw. 

Junkyard wasn’t far from

joining the punch drunk and

selling popcorn in the stands.

He should have taken up badminton,

miniature golf, or watercolor.

Quit, Dad said, before you feel

as bad as you look. I dropped salt pills

into Junkyard’s paw. He winked at me

behind his facemask and grinned

with his toothless, baby-pink gums.

 

On the Sidelines

The word on the street was that Tony

had been a genius, a lawyer maybe,

but scarlet fever had cooked his brain; synapses

had melted into gruel. What was left 

kept him shackled, tongue on a spoon

slurping syllables, eyes watery,

rheumatic on game days. He chewed

Union plug, spit on the grass, hands

pocketed with notepads and pencils.

The administration complained about Tony,

a village idiot on the sidelines, ragtag,

unseemly for a conference powerhouse.

He displayed his field pass on a lariat

looping his neck. Each year the same―

coaches planned, posed scenarios,

consulted cigars. Tony paced

the twenty yard line, his flap of brain,

inflamed with offense, moving the chains.

CP

Al Ortolani is a public school teacher in the Kansas City area. His poetry and reviews have appeared in New Letters, The Quarterly, The English Journal, New York Quarterly and other fine places. He has published several books of poetry: The Last Hippie of Camp 50 and Finding the Edge, from Woodley Press, Wren's House, from Coal City Press, and Cooking Chili on the Day of the Dead, from Aldrich Press. He is an editor for The Little Balkans Review and works closely with the Kansas City Writer's Place.

* Following Junkyard is a 2014 Editor's Favorite

Al Ortolani

Wildcat Miner

Try to imagine
the dead of winter,
the stove that stands
between you and the cold
an iron shell. Your children
cough up the
vapors of prairie wind,
fragile hearts behind
thin coats, canvas skin
stretched.

The croup like a turkey buzzard
circles above the hardwoods.
It lands along the creek
wings spread,
talons open. Cold rain
pecks the windows,
begins to seep.

You raise
your arms to coal,
the warmth, the darkness
mined; you
flex muscle
as it burns.


Accepting Plenty

The truck cab steeps
in the afternoon sun like tea.
The upholstery swells
and cracks with rot. Over time
our once easy laughter
wearies. We sing less, speak
less, sit on the fender of the
rusting Dodge, the trunk
of a pecan sapling splitting
the planks of the bed.
A fox burrows below
the rear axle; raccoons
chew through the floorboards
and nest behind the seat,
straw batting strewn against
the springs. Pecans drop
all afternoon. They line
the rain gutters, spread  like
a fan across the rusted roof.

CP

Al Ortolani is a public school teacher in the Kansas City area. His poetry and reviews have appeared in New Letters, The Quarterly, The English Journal, New York Quarterly and other fine places. He has published several books of poetry: The Last Hippie of Camp 50 and Finding the Edge, from Woodley Press, Wren's House, from Coal City Press, and Cooking Chili on the Day of the Dead, from Aldrich Press. He is an editor for The Little Balkans Review and works closely with the Kansas City Writer's Place.

Al Ortolani

Crows on a Line

I stepped out of Stella's Two Step                        
on Highway K.  It was                
mid-afternoon, and the north
wind blew steady, blew cold.   
    
A George Jones tune hung                 
in the doorway like the shadow                    
of an old coat.  I unwrapped
a cigar and slid it
                    
between my lips, realizing
as the music dimmed
and the pasture bled
colorless into November

that I had become all that                  
I was ever meant to be.          
Even the crows 
on a line above the road

cawed monotonously
over the same gray fescue
as yesterday. School children
passed in a yellow bus;

blank faces pasted
in the windows, crows
joining crows.


Crayon Shrapnel

Blood smeared the nostrils
of Bobby's nose and fell like a
Fu Manchu down the corners
of his chin.  His face was

clenched in rage, small fists
pounding the wooden desk
­into a vibrating plane, pencils
and crayons bounced in a sort
 
of colloidal suspension, neither
on or off of the desk, but floating
somewhere in between.
A crayon popped into his lap,

­he stopped pounding and chucked
­it in the direction of my head.
I ducked and it flew into
the hallway, smacking Sister Mercy

on the side of her left tit. The color
made a sort of "spat"
and dropped to her feet.
She let go of White Dog's ear

and rotated like a tank turret.
Oh no, Bobby whined, dropping his
head to his desk, pencils, crayons
scattering like shrapnel.

I rubbed the blood from my knuckles,
snickering at his change in fortune.
White Dog jeered from the hallway, 
Bob-by Bob-by Bob-by.

Sister Mercy flapped her dark wings
across the empty classroom,
the voices of the children at recess
growing dim as when a cloud passes.


Cat-Eyes

You explained sex pretty well,
Pop, but you never said
much about love.
You said, grab a leg boy,
when you and Andy pulled
calves. Birthing beasts seemed
second nature. Confusion lay
in blue eyes
and strands of red hair
drifting across a sunny face. 

You never told me I'd promise her
a thousand things I not only
couldn't do, but would never even
remember. You never explained
how empty a house can be
when all those undone promises
­get tossed from the front porch
like a shoebox of marbles.

Or that I'd follow her
through the night, and keep
circling her mother's house
like a childish moon, stumbling
­and slipping on the small glass
cat-eyes that were still
being emptied from her Pinto,
her purse, her pockets,
the folds of her clothes,
the creases of her hands,
the corners of her eyes.


CP

Al Ortolani is a teacher in Kansas. His poetry has appeared in New York Quarterly, The Laurel Review, The English Journal and other fine places. His second book of poetry is Finding the Edge from Woodley Press at Washburn University. He is a co-editor of The Little Balkans Review.

Al Ortolani

 

Discovering Rose

Not even the oldest neighbor (two
were interviewed)
recalled what this fringe of daffodils
once outlined.
So for the sake of history, they invented
a plausible, potting shed
with stacks of dank, clay pots,
stacked one inside the other,
leaning (impossibly) into
a shadow of tomato stakes, some
tied with nylon stockings.

A pair of cotton gloves, pinked
with a faded, blossom print
quietly feminine, caressed the lip
of a watering can.
Tools (industriously)
hung on pegboard:
the small spade and the weeding claw
and the iron crowbar for poking
holes for bulbs. All were connected
(poignantly) with cobwebs
in a galvanized bucket.

On the upper shelves, beyond
the curiosity of her cats, stood
brown bottles and dusty cardboard
labeled Poison. A sleepy
wasp flitted in the doorway
breeze. She kept a fence (defensively), probably
of painted wire.
Below the fly-specked window squatted
a bushel basket, half-filled
with the neighbor children’s stained baseballs
and scuffed plastic Frisbees.

CP

Al Ortolani is a teacher in Kansas. His poetry has appeared in New York Quarterly, The Laurel Review, The English Journal and others. His second book of poetry is Finding the Edge from Woodley Press at Washburn University. He is a co-editor of The Little Balkans Review.