SAM BAKER

Hardwood

my grandfather was born into frostbitten 
       fingertips, steaming from a charred pocket of
magma and glaciers for cutting the cord.  

his first steps were slick. he found his rhythm in the 
       crackling cadence of Lake Michigan’s mercy 
and the subtle taunts of Chicago spring.

before he learned to read the hands, time was 
        the amount of ice on the window sill. 
when the walls stopped running, it was dinner, 
        which meant racing—a fork flipped

up-side-down with his pointer finger stretched along 
        the handle. wrist-flicked, airborne, and 
swallowed whole.

he spent his evenings etching the Charleston 
        into the living room floor, keeping time to the tap’s 
drip that saved the pipes and filled the pots 
         for boiling baths, unwasted. 

he made room for pissing contests:
       torpedoing toilet paper as the static names of 
lost men read under the door—capsized.
       he learned to put off flushing

until brown. he learned to hold his mother the day the banks 
       closed and she first sold spaghetti door to door, 
that crying could heave like laughter and fear would have
       to be whistled. 

my grandfather was born with his palm threaded to his 
       shirt pocket, pledging himself to a nation 
only national for its suffering. 

he wore Chicago thin skin beneath
       the two shirts he owned, his tongue balled in his cheek 
like a look it, buddy with the moxie of the Tribune. 

he learned to tilt his head back with that
       south side swagger, flipping coins to the paperboy 
and remembering the milkman’s name. he said greetings before 
        they were rhetorical and knew locals who gave directions
relative to landmarks that had long been replaced. 

summers were spent in baseball pants or at church asking 
         God for a new glove. they were spent in the alley fielding 
Sunday hops on the crabgrass, making catches he thought 
          he’d never get out of the fabric.  

his Sundays sit in the picture on my wall, a ball cap so bent 
       you’d think the sweat would drip sideways. 

my grandfather no longer smells the meat scraps down 
       the drain after dinner. he says the disposal will break 
if he ever turns it on. 

he still vaguely remembers that dinner with 
       too many spoons and no spaghetti, the night
he cleaned up before the chambermaid arrived 
       and he settled for a clip-on bow tie. 

he clutches his crooked fingers in palms of 
       oak. the doctor said if he’d had a chair 
his back would never have lasted. 

my grandfather takes his blood thinners daily 
       and bruises at everything he touches. he opens 
and closes his fists to those defrosting winters 
       in the Chicago south when the sun peered out in 
everything audible.

I am cracking every joint in the bill of my hat 
       trying to know what it is 
about sitting on the floor 

Sam Baker is an author of poetry, fiction, and essays from Louisville, Kentucky. He currently reads for the Adroit Journal and the Kenyon Review. Baker's reads have been published or are forthcoming in The Pinch Literary Journal and elsewhere.