Al Ortolani

             Bowling Balls

I feel betrayed by thrift stores.
The gag gifts I buy each Christmas
are costing more than I can afford,
the price of humor rising
steadily like gas at the pump.
I need fifty, maybe sixty white elephants
as the family grows. This one job
that was my father’s he passed on
to me as the oldest son. It is
like being willed a bankrupt dairy farm
or the Ford that needed to be towed
out of the driveway. The joke is on me.
One year I bought everyone
a bowling ball, all with a bag, some
with shoes, misshapened, dirtied
by years in someone’s garage
or basement. It took me a summer
of garage sales and consignment auctions
to find dozens of used balls.
The truth is we have enough of everything
except time. And that was my point
with the bowling balls. They’re clumsy,
clunky like memories. They take weeks
to find and months to get rid of. After
the laugh, the dry smile, the shake
of the head, most of the bowling balls were left
at my sister’s house. For months they
sat in her closet, under her bed,
behind the couch. She considered giving
them away on Easter, before that
on Ground hog’s day and at a Super Bowl
party. One by one she carried them
out to the trash, each time unable
to dump them, our father’s quips
lined up next to the recycling.
Balls with blue or green or red swirls
were planted in the flower garden
like gazing balls. My sister gathered
petunias and marigolds
around them, you know, for laughs.

Al Ortolani’s newest collection of poems, The Taco Boat, was recently released by NYQ Books. He is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize and has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Ortolani is a husband, father, and grandfather, currently entertaining the idea of becoming a hermit. However, his wife prefers the company of the neighborhood feminists, and his dog Stanley refuses to live without treats.