Bobby Balls-In-Hand
I.
By six, Bobby Balls-In-Hand is down grocery money.
By seven, a month without gas and cigarettes.
He chalks his stick between each shot,
uses a plethora of tissues to wipe
sweat and chalk dust from his hands.
By ten, he’s down rent.
By eleven, he’s writing an IOU.
II.
The men say he got his moniker
because he can’t keep Whitey on the table,
but during a lull between songs,
he kneels in front of the ball return
to pick up an abandoned nickel.
As if in confession, he speaks hesitantly:
Once I was married to a beautiful woman.
We had a beautiful little girl.
But you know I can’t resist a money game
even if I know I’ll lose.
When she couldn’t wait up anymore, she left,
no note,
no forwarding address,
no further contact.
So, that’s how I really got my name,
my wife left me
with my fucking balls in my hand.
from: Cadillac Men by Rebecca Schumejda
click the book cover if you are interested in buying this book…
Cadillac Men
156 Pages, 6 x 9 | Library of Congress Control Number: 2012948206 | ISBN: 978-1-935520-68-9 | Anticipated Publication Date: October 1, 2012 | Cover Art: Illustrations by Hosho McCreesh | www.hoshomccreesh.com
Rebecca Schumejda’s
second full-length collection, Cadillac Men, explores the pool hall subculture before the economic downturn in 2008, when the narrator and her husband took a calculated risk and purchased a pool hall in downtown Kingston, New York. During their arduous planning, they did not consider that their business and livelihood would depend on men who threw pebbles in church collection plates, shot up in the bathroom, and had nicknames like Bobby-Balls-in-Hand, The Butcher, and Mikey Meatballs. Cadillac Men is a fractured poetic memoir about the year the narrator’s husband chased his lifelong dream by starting Crazy Eights, and the recessions that occurred as her family, the economy, her health and The Cadillac Men all took downward spirals.
Love the poem. Great project. You go, girl.
The rest of the book is easily this good!
I never knesw you owned a pool hall! Was I ever there, & if so, did I ever demostrate my patented bank shot off the overhead light fixture? Yeah, queen of the bunny-balls. Favorite quote, “Well, at least I didn’t scratch.”