Lucky You a Pen

~ johnbrandall

In 1986 my dad’s favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, lost the World Series in heartbreaking fashion to the New York Mets.  The Red Sox had twice led the Mets late in Game Six, repeatedly coming within one strike of winning the game and thereby the Series.  But bad relief pitching and an infamous miscue by the Boston first baseman allowed New York to prevail in extra innings.  

I was seven years old so I don’t remember the game well, but I do remember my dad moving from one room of the house to another, depending on how the game was going, believing superstitiously that how and where he watched the game could affect the outcome. 

The next spring my mom bought me some clothes from an erstwhile store called Venture.  Or it could have been Glik’s.  What I remember is that among those clothes was an orange t-shirt that I really liked.  The Mets wore uniforms with orange trim and their logo is orange on blue.  The t-shirt disappeared.  I asked my mom what happened to it.  Apparently my dad had banned the t-shirt on the basis of orange being a “gang color” but I suspect that the shirt reminded him of the Mets.  

~

You can’t make your bed while you’re on it.  That’s what my mom would say to me as I tried to straighten the covers atop my bunk bed, the higher of two bunks in the bedroom I shared with my younger brother.   At the end of the bunk was a window that looked out over our driveway, toward the house next door where Domino the German Shepherd lived, along with the couple who owned the house.  I could lie prone on the end of my bunk and look out the window, high above our driveway.  

Even though my bedroom was on the first floor it felt like a second-floor view because our driveway sloped down as it ran from the street to the back of our house.  On our side of the driveway was a lovely terraced rock garden that my mom looked after.  On the other side of the driveway was a steeply slanted hedge of unruly ivy and honeysuckle that my dad sometimes clipped.  The valley-like feel of the driveway put our yard at a remove from our neighbors’ yard even though they weren’t but twenty feet apart...  


To read the rest of this essay, click here...

Baja Notes (2022 edition)

~ johnbrandall

As I sit on the balcony and look east/southeast, I can see a few of the tall buildings downtown.  And I can see the masts of dozens and dozens of sailboats.  No water is visible but it is implied.  Seagulls huff and squeal.

Two guys, four rods between them.  Getting ready to cross the street by foot, from the Landing side.  One is wheeling a small suitcase.  One carries an over-the-shoulder bag, the other has a backpack.  Both sport galoshes.  One is carrying a double-sack that looks heavy.  Ice and fish.

I could write more about these fisherman but not today.  Maybe I should have planned to stay right here again on the back-end of my excursion to Tijuana?  I love this balcony.  I could sit here all week.  I don’t need to go downtown.  I can get a good burrito and beer over here.  Hashtag regret.  Next time.  Or on some future vacation.  It’s expensive but when Comic-Con is in town, what’s not?  

It’s a grey day but don’t they all start this way in San Diego?  The temperature is perfect and it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be slapping on sunscreen, reaching for my hat.  I’ve buried the lede, though.  I’ve been so engrossed in the fishing traffic that I’ve failed to mention Dan C reaching out to me by text at 4:41.  Dan is the leader of the trip I’m taking into Tijuana with Burlingame Presbyterian, my third such foray but the first in three years (COVID).  

Dan was asking me about my flight, when it gets in.  I said, “Yesterday!”  To which he replied, “Great!”  But all is not great.  One of the flights scheduled to bring in some of our group from the San Francisco airport has been flat-out canceled.  This will delay us for sure.  How long, that’s the question.  The plan was for everyone to meet at the San Diego airport at 10:30 when some of us, including me, would go get the rental vans before returning to the airport to pick up most of the rest of the group.  We have 15 to 20 people this year.  Once we get to Tijuana we will camp east of the city, with mountains in the distance.  This week we will build a basic 11’ x 22’ house for a family of four in the Antorcha neighborhood of Tijuana.  It is an act of charity, coordinated by a ministry called Amor....


Continue reading my account of last year's trip to San Diego and Tijuana...

One for Joey Votto

~ johnbrandall

A tight, glaring
Earring

A waxy, flippant
Moonbeam

The spot on the field
Where I place my hand

My swing is a fine piece of machinery
When it catches the late light of June

Which is why I’ve got
Two axes—
Because I knew
That the first one
Would rust.

Reunion

~ johnbrandall

You wanted to get the old band back together.
But we didn’t even have a band.

All we did was
sit around and drink
and talk
and smoke.
We played music
but it was music other people recorded
onto compact discs
and then sold to us.

Yeah, we’d go to venues.
There were crowds,
not drawn by us.
And there’d be bands there,
but not our band.

None of us wrote any songs.
None of us sang.
We didn’t even have any instruments...


Read the full poem and the slightly longer original version here...

Night Mining

~ johnbrandall

I never want to go to sleep again.  The only sleep I have any respect for is nap sleep, dog by my side, earplugs in, the rest of the world doing whatever it does all day—making noise, stirring up dust, laying out obstacles.  But then at night?  With them all asleep?  And I’m gonna put myself under?  I don’t think so.  It never gets more quiet than when everyone’s asleep.

~

It’s not that I never sleep.  I sleep plenty.  Sleep is the opposite of lust.  I feel it when I dream.  Heartbreak, heart moan, heart ruin.  Long, lost, and forlorn.  Shorn or unshorn, whichever is worse.  

~

I am just so in love with the world when I’m not hating it.  Look at all these people going by, look at the moon rise in the sky.  Let the road go by, cars like blinking ornaments.  My teeth are singing, headed in the direction of an early Christmas.

Night Mining...

Babler State Park, April 2018

~ johnbrandall

But Meg said, but Greg said.  Camp host reading Stephen King.  Spooky.  The Cardinals lost, the Nationals lost.  Padres at Rockies now, from Coors.  There was a brawl in this game.  Rox lead 5-0.

I turn down the sound of a commercial.  It felt especially out of place here.  In Denver you go to Applejack Wine & Spirits.  In Chicago it’s Binny’s Beverage Depot.  Heck, these days you don’t even have to go to the Binny’s store, they’ll bring it right to your door.  Joe Maddon told me that.

I went to Binny’s a couple of times when I lived a summer in Chicago.  That was back when beer was blowing up, craft beer—or microbrews, as they were then known.  I heard the Tampa Rays announcer yesterday talking about how he used to live in Chicago.  He was doing a Rays game against the White Sox.  It struck me that a lot of people have once lived in Chicago, midwesterners at least.  My brother and sister both live there now.  

I’ve only ever once been to New York City.  The Big Apple was the setting for a book I just read.  It made me want to visit again; or, it made me wish I’d been born there, had a chance to spend more than a few days of my life there.  I don’t think I could move to NYC now.  Not as a dog owner.  Not even as a married man.  I would’ve had to have lived there young.  If I were living in NYC I’d have to be able to float around.  I could have a job but no attachments outside of that.  Otherwise I think the City would crush me, wring me out, drive me mad.


Camping a night in Babler Park five years ago...

“Making Minerals” at Horned Things Journal

~ johnbrandall

I had a poem published last week on the website of Horned Things Journal. I will publish the poem on this site later this year. But you can read the poem on Horned Things now by following this link:

Horned Things Journal, Issue Two

This site is still relatively young but they have assembled an impressive and eclectic mix of writing and art in this second issue. I feel lucky to have had "Making Minerals" included in their journal.

“Newville 108” at the Under Review

~ johnbrandall

I am posting today to highlight a poem I had published yesterday on another website.

My poem called "Newville 108" is currently running at a site called the Under Review.

I am hoping you will check my poem out there. Later on this year, I will post it here but for now I want to thank them for publishing my work and I want to invite you to check out their site, and to take a look at my poem there by following this link:

https://www.underreviewlit.com/issues/7-winter-2023

If you are headed there on your phone, I should say that my poem will read best and look best if you tilt your phone sideways so that the screen gets wider, allowing the poem enough room to accommodate the length of its lines. It also looks good on a laptop.

Finally, the Under Review has suggested that it might produce a limited run of print copies of this current issue, which I hope will happen.

The Clerk Will Call the Roll

~ johnbrandall

The Speaker is third in line to be the President.  But it’s more than that.  This very House of Representatives could play a massive, deciding role in choosing the next President.  I’m not talking about something akin to the illegal attempt to dismiss the Electoral College that some of these same Republicans attempted in 2020.  If, in an election for President, no candidate secures 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives votes to choose a President.  The implications are profound.  Imagine a third-party candidate who receives, say, twenty percent of the electoral votes, who somehow emerges from the House vote with the White House in hand.  It could happen.  It’s in the Constitution...


My coverage of the contest for The Speaker of the House, 118th Congress Edition...