Three Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry, ’10)

An excerpt from “Secrets,” one of three poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry, ’10) appearing at Scoundrel Time:

 

Secrets

At two a.m., without enough spirits
Spilling into my liver to know enough
To call my tongue to silence, Miles learned
Of the years I spent inside a box: a spell,
A kind of incantation I was under; not whisky,
But History: I robbed a man. This, months
Before he would drop bucket after bucket
On opposing players, the entire bedraggled
Bunch five and six and he leaping as if
Every lay-up erases something. That’s how
I’d saw it, my screaming-coaching-sweating
Presence recompense for the pen; my father
Has never seen me play ball is part of this.
My son has seen me drink whisky in the morning
Is the other part. Tell me we aren’t running
Towards failure is what I want to ask my kid,
But it is two in the a.m. and despite him seeming
More lucid than me, I know it’s the cartoons reflecting
Back from his eyes, not a sense of the world. So
When he tells me, Daddy it’s okay, I know what’s
Happening is some straggling angel, lost from
His pack finding a way to fulfill his dream,
Breathing breath into this kid who crawls into
My arms, wanting, more than stories of my past, […continue reading here]