Three Poems by Robert Cooperman

 

Good Neighbors

They never robbed in the neighborhood,

but would return at 2 a.m. or so, and silent

as a cloaking fog, unload TVs from their truck,

piled them high as Stonehenge in their living room,

and always polite as refugees afraid to say

or do anything to upset their American neighbors.

Once, the family patriarch offered you a monster

system bigger than your living room wall.

You thanked him, but said your son

had already bought you a very nice one.

He tipped his battered fedora, and sauntered

back to his house, with its buzz-cut front lawn.

Hours later, their pick-up rumbled off,

on another foraging mission:  washing machines,

from factory outlets, appliance stores, or private homes?

Discourteous for a church-going lady to ask.

The Lies We Tell

These are the lies we tell

to comfort a friend

whose small, skittish Sheltie

vanished during an evening

of sorcerer-dry thunderstorms:

"She'll make her way back,

just search the neighborhood

and call her name.

"The chance that a fox

or coyote took her

is more remote than venom

from a cobra

in our safe Denver streets.

"Someone found her

and will call any second,

telling you to forget

the reward you posted

on every tree and telephone pole

within two miles of your house,

and he'll bring her around

in a minute or two.

"And of course, the biggest,

most comforting lie of all:

you'll open your back door--

the door she always returned to,

when you let her into the yard--

and there she'll be, wagging

her elegant, impatient tail,

wondering what took you so long."

A Lesson in Gambling

Once, watching on TV with a friend

and his old man, as the anathema Yankees

played the Tigers, I gloated:  Dean Chance

was striking out Yank after Yank.

"They can't touch this guy."

Freddy's dad, who smoked cigars

bigger than Babe Ruth's bat, got fed great,

bloody steaks by his run-off-her-feet wife,

and had guys dropping off paper bags,

and whose mugs I'd seen on post office walls,

smirked,

"Blomber'll hit one out,

and the Yanks'll win the game."

Before I could reach into my first wallet,

Freddy gripped my arm and shook his head.

On the next pitch, Blomberg parked one over

the right-field fence, so short I could've put one

into the stands if I pulled it right down the line.

I sat fuming, not so much for the Yankees winning,

but that they needed to cheat, like the dumbbell-rocks

who threatened they'd make me bleed everywhere,

if I didn't let them see my math answers.

Robert Cooperman's latest collection is GO PLAY OUTSIDE ( Apprentice House). Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is A NIGHTMARE ON HORSEBACK.