Clothespins

By Stuart Dybek b. 1942 Stuart Dybek

I once hit clothespins

for the Chicago Cubs.

I'd go out after supper

when the wash was in

and collect clothespins

from under four stories

of clothesline.

A swing-and-a-miss

was a strike-out;

the garage roof, Willie Mays,

pounding his mitt

under a pop fly.

Bushes, a double,

off the fence, triple,

and over, home run.

The bleachers roared.

I was all they ever needed for the flag.

New records every game—

once, 10 homers in a row!

But sometimes I'd tag them

so hard they'd explode,

legs flying apart in midair,

pieces spinning crazily

in all directions.

Foul Ball! What else

could I call it?

The bat was real.

Source: Brass Knuckles (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1979)

Biography

Poet and fiction writer Stuart Dybek was born in 1942 and raised on the South Side of Chicago. He attended Loyola University in Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His collections of poetry include Brass Knuckles (1979) and Streets in Their Own Ink (2004). His works of fiction, including the short story collections Childhood and Other Neighborhoods (1980) and The Coast of Chicago (1990), and the novel-in-stories I Sailed . . .

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