The Classmate’s Boast
Rico said he spoke with Guiliana
the day the bike race came through Terni.
She was in the crowd near top of the steps,
watching the stream of riders on wheels
gliding by like an oversize, glossy anaconda.
I don’t believe the boast of Rico Camargo.
He told me he shared tall lemonades
on the terrace with Guiliana and her friend,
after the peloton rounded corner,
making ready to climb Monte Terminillo.
Skinflint’s Day Off
You could see it coming – the thrust from upper buttocks thru thighs & calves & footpads to the pedals, the increasing pace on bursts, warily gauging the opponents’ weakening stamina. I did, from the couch, as they climbed
Mt. Etna on racing bicycles [stage 9, 2011 Giro d’Italia], that afternoon Alberto Contador rose to an emphatic lead.
My wife comes into the room about the time Contador completes the day’s victory, and I’m blipping to a National Geographic program. “We could make shrimp paella, or do I mean the other one, polenta?” she says.
Responding to her, I turn away from the arrival of noisy toucans on television, which is rousing a nocturnal micoleon from its jungle sleep on a canopy limb. “What? Do you have prawns?”
“We could go out and get some. I already have corn meal and everything else.”
“OK. I can do that. Now, or whenever you’re ready.” A large conveyor, which rumbles in the background all hours with rock to be broken into gravel, is audible from across the river as we go out to the Mitsubishi, and Johnny Mercer’s lyric is in my head. I’m with you always, come rain or come shine.
Hardscrabble
after J. Joyce & G. Perec
Dabbler dares bed
a barrel racer.
Her cable care red,
rare sable has hare.
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