Poetry: Selections from Damon Hubbs

Piper Saratoga

 

Here at the Spa

a bell is wrung 17 minutes before the post of each race

which is the same amount of time

it takes Alison and I 

to drink a beer at the Fourstardave Sports Bar. 

Hans is betting recklessly on a horse named Keats 

because he spends his nights 

tenderly alone in a studio apartment in Hornell, NY.

He is always being dismissed

as a trick of the heart or a fatal vulnerability  

and is telling a woman in a lilac bonnet that poetry 

is only read by 12 percent of Americans. 

I’m not sure where he got this fact 

or why tipsters call their best bet a “nap.”

The canoe in the infield lake 

is mysteriously moored and motionless

and I can see the breath of Achilles’ deathless 

horses, the Cups and Stakes and Handicaps 

and Alison says, what’s a Yankee bet? 

It has something to do with the Kennedys, I think

and the graveyard spiral 

and by this time Hans is saying 

can you believe 88 percent of Americans don’t read poetry?

Numbers are a tragedy so we order three more beers. 

O Balius, O Xanthus, pilot the field 

like the bold dancers of the West Wind. 

Sallie Gardner at a Gallop

 

Alison’s mother had a blue ribbon pony named Pepper.

She delighted in fairs, Alison’s mother. 

She told Alison that the horniness before and after your period 

attracts savage young men. 

This is before she was buried in Hope Cemetery

and I lost a fortune 

buying a carrot for a Chestnut. 

Why I’m telling this to Melanie, I don’t know. 

The pre-racing coverage has been on for hours 

and Hans is across the room 

in Bill’s apartment making drinks.

Echo Spring is the story of his life. That and poetry

that and his attraction to women like Melanie. 

I feel bad for Alison. 

She’s loved him since ’91.  

They met at a Muybridge exhibit 

at the Addison Gallery of American Art, 

Sallie Gardner at a Gallop proving there are moments 

in a horse’s stride when all of its hooves are off the ground.The flying gallop, it’s called

which is what I was doing that year on I-95 

on my way from The Downs Club in Scarborough 

to meet up with a girl whose father was in the IRA. 

The Maine State Police saying

you’re quite the young gun, huh—

Why I’m telling this to Melanie, I don’t know. 

I was never as gifted and talented as they said. 

Paddock to purse we’re put out to grass,  

the grandest foal and the undertaker’s horse.

There’s no loving in truth. 

Alison knows. 

Hunters and Jumpers

 

Before the auction of aging jockey silks 

and 45 poker tables, Alison says something like 

my sparrow, skittery pigeon 

who wants those words in their eulogy.

And Hans agrees

having no love for Theodore Roethke

although he does fancy girls with neckcurls 

and certain European movies 

where grief is like getting thrown from a horse. 

Are you a hunter or jumper, Alison asks  

but nobody is listening

what with the ‘Gansett and our neighbors

and all the pink petal caps pulled like photobooks 

of Gibson Girls with camelback trunks.

Then the call to post. And we can see 

the clouds move close and the flies 

and Hans says there’s too many Janes in poetry.

And I couldn’t agree more. 

I’m sniffing for roses

in a grandstand where angels 

have dirty faces

and luck isn’t a heritable trait. 

In the days of the New Hampshire Sweepstakes

Rockingham Park was called the Rock

not to be confused with Alcatraz

although Whitey Bulger was known to spend Saturdays 

in the birdcage talking the morning line.  

Seabiscuit raced here in ’35 and ’36, Alison says

as if to lighten our losses. As if to fix our memories. 

It was the finest racecourse in the world. 

And maybe it was. Maybe it was. 

 

 

 

 

*Hunters and Jumpers was originally published at Don’t Submit!

Damon Hubbs writes poems about Thulsa Doom, Italo Disco and girls who cry at airports. He's the author of three chapbooks: The Day Sharks Walk on Land (Alien Buddha Press), Coin Doors & Empires (Alien Buddha Press) and Charm of Difference (Back Room Poetry). Recent publications include Don't Submit!, Urban Pigs Press, Antiphony Journal, Misery Tourism, The Argyle Literary Magazine, Horror Sleaze Trash, and elsewhere.