Home Run

by Paul Kropp

  “No competition yet,” Maggie whispered to me.

  “Right,” I said. But the question playing through my mind was, what poem was I going to read? Did I dare read the poem that I really wanted to read?

  The third poet was a man dressed like a rapper though he was quite soft-spoken when he got to the microphone. He read a very traditional ode to his mother, and I thought the poem was really quite good. Poet number three contrasted with the fourth poet, a young man with greasy hair who delivered a sound poem entitled “Revving Intestines.” I can’t recall the words, even though there weren’t many of them, but the sounds were quite spectacular, ranging from the Rrrrrr of a growling stomach, to various clicks and pops, to explosive hiccups and other bodily noises.

  My mother would not have approved, but the crowd loved his poem. A whole table of people to our right got up and gave poet number four a standing ovation. I had nothing to compete with it.

  Then it was time for poet number five—me. Shakily, I made my way up to the stage. I looked back at our tables, at the sea of smiling faces, and then caught a glimpse of Melissa Halvorsen, who was mentally shooting daggers at me. It was her scowl that helped me choose the poem.

  “I, uh, is this mike on?” I began, awkwardly. “I’d like to read a sonnet, and like all sonnets this one has been inspired by an extraordinary woman. My own ‘dark lady.’” I thought that was a pretty impressive Shakespearean reference to sneak into the introduction. Then I began:

  You saw when I stumbled. You saw when I fell

  You didn’t care, you said, and helped me up.

  You taught me all the secrets you could tell,

  your eyes as clear as water in a cup

  My heart was just a lamp that gave no light

  until you taught me not to be alone.

  Your hair as bright as fire in the night,

  I hear your voice when I cannot hear my own

  Now nothing matters till I know you’ve heard

  the things I say. The electric heat of skin

  burns on my fingers when I touch your hand.

  I eep on wainting for the perfect words

  to say how I feel, to help us begin,

  knowing only you can understand.

  When I finished, there was thunderous applause from my table of friends, and an “Oh my!” from Maggie, who had turned a serious shade of pink. Scrooge gave me a thumbs-up from the judges’ panel. The rest of the audience seemed vaguely appreciative, too, since mine was the only poem so far that seemed the least bit, well…poetic.

  When I reached the table, I was a deep shade of pink myself. I felt like I’d put an awful lot of myself on display, maybe far too much.

  “What schmaltz!” Jeremy cried. “How long did it take you to come up with lines like that?”

  The others ignored him. “Awesome,” said Allison. “Incredible,” said Hannah. The rest of my friends tossed around similar adjectives, but the nicest compliment I received came from poet number one. The older man tapped me on the shoulder, then said, “Wish I could write like that.”

  Well, how about that, I said to myself.

  None of this approval mattered, of course, if the dark lady of my sonnet wasn’t impressed. I wasn’t sure how she felt. Maggie seemed a little guarded when I sat down, as if she were holding back some big emotion of her own.

  But then Maggie grabbed my arm, squeezing it, and whispered in my ear. “Did you mean it?”

  “Of course I meant it,” I replied. My face got very close to hers.

  “Really mean it?” she asked. “I mean, you weren’t just making it up to write a pretty sonnet, or were you?”

  “No, I meant it,” I said. “I didn’t just make it up. I’ve been feeling it, all year. It just took me a long time to understand what I was feeling.”

  “Oh, Al,” she sighed, then nuzzled her face against my shoulder. “I thought it was only me.”

  Our friends, bless their hearts, looked tactfully away. They pretended to be watching poet number six, or stirring their drinks, or staring into space. It’s funny how a little authentic emotion seems to make everyone shy. Even Jeremy, who must have been thinking all sorts of lascivious thoughts, said nothing to break the moment.

  The glow lasted all of thirty seconds, until Melissa Halvorsen made her way between the tables and stopped at ours. Her thoughts were succinct: “What a load of crap.” Then she pushed on, heading towards the washrooms.

  Maggie lifted her head from my arm. “To think, I selected her to start your dating life. What was I thinking?”

  “What are you thinking now?” I asked her.

  “Later,” she whispered. “Later.”

  The other poets read their works while we sat, drinking more pitchers of beer, applauding anyone who was good, or funny, or really bizarre. Among the good poets was a woman, poet number eight, who delivered an ode in an Irish lilt that made me think of William Butler Yeats. In fact, the poem was so good I wondered if Yeats had actually written it. There was also a male poet who looked like a university professor, but his poem was so full of dense literary language that it was hard to determine what, if anything, it meant.

  When all fifteen poets had finished, the judges put their heads together and the announcer went back with a calculator. There were a few tense minutes while the deliberations went on, and then the announcer returned to the stage.

  The judges have s-s-select-t-ted f-f-five p-p-poets for the s-second round. They are p-poets numbers f-f-four, f-f-five, eight, eleven, and twelve.”

  There was another round of applause and some clapping on the back for me. I beamed. My first public performance as a poet and I had made the first cut. Not bad, Al, I told myself. Not bad at all. With Maggie’s head pressed against me, I was feeling very, very good indeed.

  “What are you going to read this time?” Maggie asked me.

  “Another sonnet,” I said.

  “How many do you have?”

  “About a dozen, but not enough.”

  “Not enough for what?”

  “Not enough to do you justice.”

  Now that, I decided, was a very smooth line. The only problem with it as a “line” was that it was true.

  In the second round, poet four kept on with his body-parts theme, this time offering “Beating Heart,” a succession of sounds that would have been a good soundtrack for one of those reality medical shows. Poet five, me, offered one more sonnet about his red-headed beloved, this one not quite as good as the first, but good enough to garner a standing ovation from my group of fans. Poet number eight did another Yeats-like poem about a local lake, a poem full of wonderful sounds and evocative language that deserved far more applause than it received. Poet number eleven did a poem about tattoos, but it was a bit heavy on the needles and a bit weak on the imagery. Then poet number twelve got up, stared at the audience with dark eyes, and delivered a wonderfully musical poem so full of sound and rhythm, that I wasn’t sure what it really meant.

  There was a surge of applause. Was his poem that good? I don’t know. But the performance was terrific and poet number twelve deserved his ovation.

  The judges compared their score sheets as we ordered one more pitcher of beer. Maggie was holding onto my arm so tightly I thought she might cut off circulation. I think she was more worried about my making the final round than I was myself.

  “F-f-for the f-f-final r-r-round: poets five, eight, and t-t-twelve!”

  Maggie turned to me with a wonderful smile. The rest of our group began thumping their mugs on the table, chanting: “Five, five, five, five!”

  I wasn’t ready for this. By now, I thought, I’d be eliminated from the competition and cheerfully consoling myself with a few more glasses of beer. But now there was a chance, just a chance, that I might win.

  “You can do it, Alan,” Maggie whispered.

  “Knock ’em dead, Al,” added Jeremy.

  I was trembling. I had written a dozen sonnets, but not a dozen good sonnets. Sonnets are hard t
o write, I found, even if you don’t bother to rhyme the lines. There are all these structural problems, all these issues of form and rhythm that a real poet knows how to handle. I wasn’t a real poet. I was an amateur, a beginner.

  And I was terrified.

  “You’ll be fine,” Maggie said, kissing me on my cheek. I think she was trying to give me courage.

  “You’re the man,” Scrooge added.

  I didn’t feel much like the man as I approached the first of three barstools on the stage. I felt like a guy who’d already spent his two best poems and was now reaching into the bottom of a pretty empty satchel hoping for a verse that wasn’t there yet.

  There were new rules now. The audience’s applause and yells of appreciation would be measured on some kind of machine, and the winner determined by volume alone. Scrooge shrieked when that was announced, and I thought, for a moment, that my friends’ noise might overcome any deficiency in the poem I was about to read.

  “Poet number five, Alan M-m-macklin.”

  Ah, I had a name now.

  “I, uh, well,” I began stupidly, “this is not a sonnet. It is a…a…I’m not sure, really, but here it is.”

  The audience grew hushed. I began to read.

  Listen to the drumbeat

  that beats in every single thing.

  Listen to the perfect song

  I never learned to sing.

  Look up at the rings of fire

  in every stormy sky

  and watch the famous runner

  who’s always passing by.

  The drumbeat is my heart, my love.

  The runner is my need.

  The fire is my burning,

  and the song I couldn’t sing

  Is about the secret moment

  and the waiting and the yearning

  and the way two lovers cling

  and the song they learn to sing.

  I confess, my voice cracked a bit as the last lines came out. Too much feeling always breaks me up a little. But my friends covered for me by going overboard with noise: there was shrieking and whooping and applauding and stomping and pounding of beer mugs on the table. The rest of the audience was polite, but not quite as enthusiastic. Sill, I was a contender based on volume alone.

  Poet number eight was actually named Evelyn Turner, a member of the local poetry guild and obviously a considerable fan of Yeats. Her next poem was another perfectly constructed, brilliantly rhymed ode that might have brought down the house in 1912. Unfortunately, the response today was more reserved. Without a band of fanatics to make noise, she was definitely out of the running.

  So it was Al Macklin versus poet number twelve, B. J. Stewart.

  The poet with the penetrating eyes and rhythmical but incomprehensible verses.

  This time, he began with a little prologue. “I want to dedicate this to Gillian,” he said, and then he began.

  “Ever since ever, since ever since, ever since ever, ever since that day, that day, that…”

  He looked at the audience.

  “That day you left.”

  We expected a poem full of sound and perhaps fury that would ultimately come to signify nothing at all. Instead we got a beautiful love poem, one that sounded like the very best of e. e. cummings, delivered with reverence and respect and even love.

  At its conclusion, the audience was on its feet—even my friends—giving poet number twelve the applause that he and his poem so richly deserved. There was no way that my beginner verses could compete. B.J. Stewart had won the contest for performance, authenticity, and sheer poetry.

  I joined in the applause, then left the stage as the announcer came forward with an envelope in his hand. We assumed that this would entitle winning poet number twelve to his dozen free pitchers for the summer that was still to come.

  I got back to my table of friends, offering a little shrug and a wan smile. I was about to sit down when Maggie stood up and grabbed me.

  “Come on, we’re going,” she said.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “My place. You get the runner-up prize.”

  Then she dragged me out the door.

  26

  At Last

  “SO THIS IS IT?” I said. It was only half a question.

  “This is it,” Maggie replied.

  “How do we start?”

  “Kiss me.”

  We had taken a cab to Maggie’s apartment building. Her dad was off fishing with some of his friends from the board of education maintenance department, so we had the place to ourselves. The apartment was dark when we got there, but Maggie put on only one light before she found a bunch of tea candles and some matches. Soon there were a dozen tiny lights glowing in the living room. Then Maggie went off to the kitchen and handed me another beer. “To loosen you up,” Maggie said, because I really was nervous. No, terrified would be a better word. At last, this was it.

  “A big kiss?” I asked her.

  “Any size,” she replied. “But don’t stop kissing until I say so.”

  This was no problem. Maggie has always been a wonderful kisser. Maggie knew just how to do it—just how far to open her lips, just how much to play with my tongue, just when to stop for a breath so we could kiss again.

  “So was it the poetry? I asked.

  “No, it was the feeling behind the poetry.”

  “That’s real,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “So you felt it, too?” “Yeah, me too.”

  The dialogue of lovers is never profound. Maybe that’s why we need poetry to make sense of our feelings, to give words to the intensity. When we’re there—touching, kissing, feeling—the words get lost.

  “We’re both virgins, you know,” Maggie said. She had unbuttoned my shirt.

  “Well, kind of,” I said. I unzipped my pants. Why hadn’t I worn sexier underwear?

  She shook her head. “What happened to me in Vermont doesn’t count. That wasn’t making love. It wasn’t even real sex.” She paused. “Unzip me, please.”

  Oh, those wonderful words. I think Unzip me, please should be in phrase books for foreign travellers, along with Your place or mine? and My goodness, you’re so big! Surely these are the words that any traveller really needs.

  “So you’re a spiritual virgin, and I’m a physical virgin.”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” she said, shrugging so the dress fell down to her feet. “Do you want to take off my bra?”

  “Yeah, I’d like that,” I said.

  I had to wrestle with the little clasps at the back for a bit, but then the bra unhooked and joined Maggie’s dress in a pile on a chair. Maggie’s breasts were beautiful, more beautiful than I could have imagined.

  “The freckles kind of stop,” I said, bending down to tease her.

  “Mmm, that’s good,” Maggie said. “Be gentle, now.”

  “I’m always gentle.”

  “But not too gentle.”

  “Like this?”

  “Yeah, that’s good.”

  I think the problem with making out is in the contradictions. How much is too much? How fast should a guy go? How do you read the signs, the sighs, the sweet little intakes of breath?

  “Okay, we’ve got to stop for a second.”

  We pulled back from each other. My pants were now bundled around my ankles, my socks were still on my feet, and my underwear had formed a tent. I probably looked ridiculous.

  Maggie, on the other hand, looked wonderful.

  “A thong?” I asked.

  “Just for you.”

  “Really?”

  Maggie said nothing, then pulled it off. She was nude. Now I had to scramble to get out of the rest of my clothes.

  “You’re beautiful,” I said.

  “No, I’m not,” she replied. “But thank you for the thought.”

  —

  “So that was it?” I said.

  “That was it,” Maggie replied.

  What could I say then? Once again I needed poetry and couldn’
t come up with even one line. I lay there in silence. No longer a virgin. I sighed and rolled over to kiss Maggie again.

  “Was it good?”

  “Wonderful. And for you.”

  “Very nice,” she sighed. “Now I have a hunch you want to do it again.”

  “Well, yeah. But that was my only condom. What do we do?” “We get one from the bathroom, dummy,” she told me. “No way I’m going to end up pregnant like your mother.”

  27

  Poet Laureate

  I THINK THE MORNING-AFTER glow from sex can be better than sex itself…or almost as good. There is something quite wonderful—no exquisite, that’s the word—about lying in bed while your lover runs off to the kitchen and returns with coffee and croissants.

  “I love you,” I said, as Maggie handed me a coffee mug.

  “You’re blathering,” she replied. “This morning, you think you love me, but tomorrow, we’ll see.” She put the plate on the bedspread. “Now be careful with the croissant; I don’t want crumbs all over my bed.” Then she kissed me.

  I sipped my coffee. “Do you want to know when I figured out I was in love with you?

  “When?” Maggie asked. She snuggled up against me.

  “When you called me a dolt,” I said. “Remember in that email? Actually, I think you said I was a delightful dolt.”

  “And that made you love me?”

  “No, that’s when I realized that I already loved you. Because I wasn’t mad when you wrote that. I wasn’t hurt, even though it was true. I just went, like, this girl knows who I really am and she still likes me, and then there was this kind of shiver that went up my spine.”

  Maggie kissed me. It was a big kiss, flavoured with coffee and croissants. “I more than liked you, you dolt. I fell for you last year. I probably fell for you two years ago.”

  “You did?”

  “But I couldn’t tell you. We were going to school on opposite sides of the country. And I was afraid I’d get hurt. I mean, you spent your first year at college trying desperately to get laid with every girl under the sun, and I was just waiting. That’s all I could do. But every time you emailed me about some girl, I’d be seething.”