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Howard Beach: Queens, NY
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Uncle Marty.
eating chickpeas from the strainer
greets me in a t-shirt and underwear
his 90-year-old mother
in her corner
in disrepair.
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“I got no regrets,” he said, “I’ve seen it all,
I’ve seen Bobby Thompson hit that ball.”
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His mother says through her toothless smile:
“He was always good with maps
that’s what they said,
he always had maps
in his head
that’s what they said.”
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Marty scratches his crotch
takes another shot
of the cheap scotch.
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Marty despises the family barbecues
wears a polyester suit to the beach
often spits
and has a toothpick
in his teeth.
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“Yeah,” he said to me,
as he glances out to the sea
“Yeah I seen it all,
I was there
when Bobby Thompson hit
that ball.”
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**** One of the most famous moments in baseball history, Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning 1951 blast for the Giants….
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Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press. His work has appeared in Rattle, sPoKe, Harvard Mosiac, The Boston Globe, Artword Quarterly, Hazmat Review, Word Riot and elsewhere. Holder has a new collection of poetry due out this summer from Big Table Books, ” The Essential Doug Holder.” The “Doug Holder Papers Collection” is being processed at the University at Buffalo.
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North of Oxford 