Poetry of Issue #7 Page 11
Legacy
I used to play baseball
behind Rick Manning Drive,
where a sandlot used to be
up the block from Walmart, and old men driving
Buick LeSabres used to fear their windshields
being shattered to Kingdom Come
by balls smacked off Louisville Sluggers
and scratched metal Easton bats.
Blue-eyed girls in Daisy Dukes used to come watch
me, my brothers, cousins, and Ruthless Ray
Mankowski, who had serious heat
and the most dangerous chin music
Niagara Falls had seen
since Sal The Barber
Maglie back in the day.
I wish Ray didn’t drink
all that Genny Light and go for a drive
after the no-no he threw
in our senior year. He was months away
from being a Miami Hurricane, a few years more
from having a park
with his name on it.