Five Poems by Robert Cooperman

 

First Ride with My Father

 

Experts say we remember nothing

from before we’re five or so,

needing language to record memories,

 

but there was that three-year old night,

heat heavy on our apartment, me cranky

with sweat.  My father strapped me

 

into my stroller, and rolled me down

to Ocean Parkway, gently rocking me

while he smoked, as cars sped past. 

 

And as if Prospero had summoned it,

a soft breeze cooled my small, sweaty chest.

Dad’s lit cigarette a light in a window,

 

signalling that home was waiting,

whenever we were ready.

 

     

First Driving Lesson

 

I was eighteen: no idea how to handle

the wheel, but desperate—a horny teenager

who believed a car was the key to dirty bliss—

to learn how to drive.  When Dad finally caved

to my wheedling, Mom declared,

 

“If you’re determined to die behind the wheel,

then the whole family will perish with you!”

 

So with Dad riding shotgun, Mom and Jeff

in the back, in the empty high school parking lot

I fed a little gas, like Dad had showed me,

then gulping breaths for courage, shifted into “Drive,”

the car bolting like a rodeo bronc, Mom gasping,

Jeff cheering, the wild road beckoning.

 

Steering was even worse: all I could think of

was to imitate movie getaway wheelmen

after bank heists.  They flung the wheel left to right

and back again and again, over desperate-to escape-

the-cops roads, our family Ford careening

like a bumper car, the engine whining in the empty lot,

until Dad, his face red as the “Warning” light, shouted,

 

“Brake, brake!  We’ll get you driving lessons.”

 

Mom breathed relief like a balloon with the air

shooting out, my kid brother laughed, knowing

he could’ve done a lot better, and I wondered

if maybe a lifetime on the subway wasn’t a bad idea. 

 

Me and Parnelli Jones

 

Among my friends, a ritual

more sacred than fasting

on Yom Kippur: when one of us

earned his driver’s license,

we’d tool down to Nathan’s Famous

in Coney Island, for celebratory

dogs and fries and to stare

at the hot-pants women, and try not

to make eye contact with their muscle.

 

So with my new license—far

more legitimate than the deed

to the Brooklyn Bridge—I informed

my father I’d need the car that Friday night. 

He looked up from the racing form

and half-laughed, half scowled,

 

“Listen Parnelli,” referring to the famous

race car driver, “you may have fooled

the dope who gave you the driver’s test,

but you can’t fool me.  You’re not driving

at night with your crumb-bum friends.

So just get used to running errands

for your mother, until I say otherwise.

 

“Now, turn on the Knicks game

and take a load off; plenty of time

for you to do something I hope isn’t

lethally stupid behind the wheel.” 

 

So I watched and fumed:

the Knicks, for once,

not an embarrassment.

 

A Country Drive

 

One morning of our Catskills

bungalow colony summer

when I was maybe ten, Dad and I drove

into the nearby small town, on an errand.

 

By the side of the blacktop, two young,

sexy-smiling women, not bothering

to lift their thumbs in the universal signal,

just billowing in their summer dresses.

 

Dad stopped, smiling as if remembering

an adventure from before he’d met my mother.

The next we knew, they’d pulled pistols,

ordered us out, one of them planted

 

a rose-red kiss on my cheek, stirring something

that almost made my head explode,

They drove off, laughing, Thelma and Louise,

or Belle Starr and Bonnie Parker on a crime spree.

 

While I stared at our vanishing car,

Dad spat words he’d told me never to utter,

and sighed we had to report this to the cops,

while all I could think of was that kiss.

 

And then, of course, I woke, somehow

twenty years older, New York City

morning light cruel as that snub-nose .38.

 

Breakfast with My Father

 

Dad drove his Lower East Side business’

panel truck to where we ate breakfast, before

I jumped the subway to my commuter college

in the terra incognita of the Bronx.

 

At his favourite cafeteria,

Dad always had the scrambled eggs,

hash browns and toast, and once

he slipped in three rashers of bacon

and winked not to rat us out to Mom,

who kept our apartment kosher enough

for the Head Rabbi of Jerusalem.

 

Me?  I was addicted to the French toast,

explosive with cinnamon and syrup.

Sated, I caught the “D” train

while Dad drove to another day

of his drunken thief of a partner.

 

Thinking back, I should’ve kissed him,

sprung for those meals: my way of saying

how much I appreciated the rides,

the conversations, for just being with him.

Robert Cooperman's latest collection is BEARING THE BODY OF HECTOR HOME (FutureCycle Press).  Forthcoming from Kelsay Books is HELL AT COCK'S CROW, a sonnet sequence about pirates.