“An imitative meta fiction about poetry and poets” by James Joaquin Brewer
“I’d as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.”
After Robert Frost picks an apple from the kitchen bowl for breakfast on the first warm morning of spring, he makes sure to tie the bright white strings of his size-nine Converse high-tops as tight as his arthritic fingers will allow. (Care of the foot is critical.) Eager for the new experience ahead, he grabs his old canvas gym bag and sneaks out the back door, apple in hand, to meet his good neighbor Jack K. on the other side of the gate for the short walk to the unfamiliar court.
Throughout the previous spring, at Jackie’s insistence–proclaimed on the first day of the new season, the idea just generated spontaneously it had seemed to Robert –they had been committed fencers. (“Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, / One on a side. It comes to little more . . . .”)
The foils were surprisingly expensive, but they had saved a considerable amount by electing not to purchase masks. “We don’t need no stinking mercy masks,” Jackie had growled at the cashier before converting his tone into a soaring laugh. “We won’t be getting that close to one another, merci-you-very-much. We’re just taking it up for the exercise–the chance to limber up and increase our flexibility. I’m not a’feared of my partner here–he’s quite . . . disciplined.” He prodded the button at the end of his shiny new toy against Robert’s chest. Robert half-smiled, took a step back, and carefully tucked the credit-card carbon into the pocket of his weather-stained windbreaker.
By the end of that rather short season of thrusting at one another under the inconsistent shade of some decrepit trees in the town park, they shared the opinion that Jackie’s prediction had been reasonably close to accurate. The few minor scratches both had received were easily treated with the contents of Jackie’s modest medicine cabinet. On each of these unfortunate–but rare and mostly peaceful–occasions, Robert would stand out in the driveway and wait for his good neighbor to return from behind his irregularly bouldered fence with a couple of drugstore bandages and a tiny vial of antiseptic lotion. By the time spring had turned to summer and the pair had decided to switch to croquet, their consensus was that when it came to fencing they were well-matched.
This year, again at Jackie’s insistence, they decide their new spring game is tennis. At his insistence also, to save on gasoline they agree to use the nearby grade-school playground basketball court–even though it lacks a net. “Who needs a net anyway,” says Jackie. “I’m too old and stiff to properly leap across one without killing myself after I beat you six-love, six-love, and six-love.”
“Maybe so,” returns Robert, “but I’ll pretend it’s there, just low to the ground, as I skip across it after smashing that last fast winner past your feeble forehand, your feeble backhand, your any kind of hand!”
“I take that as an impolite and unpoetic insult,” sends back Jackie. “Bad form, sir, bad form!”
“Well, sir,” replies Robert, “mark my words well–and yours too–after what you said about love-love-love it serves you right! Who are you to accuse me of bad form?”
“Serves me wrong, you mean,” retorts Jackie, watching Robert take an ancient-looking tennis racket from his dusty gym bag. Suddenly Jackie reaches down and snatches two tennis balls from the open bag, then straighten sup with a grin that becomes nearly a leer as he tries juggling the pair of fuzzy spheres. Robert stands scanning his good neighbor from head to toe for a moment before slowly extending an empty hand to intercept one of the balls, the other falling to the ground and dribbling away to bounce off the pipe-metal stanchion supporting an un-used, chain-netted, rust-coated basketball hoop.
“You’re out of bounds, sir,” shouts Robert. “Over the line!” Holding the head, he points the wooden handle of his racket first toward the rolling ball and then down at Jackie’s size-twelve shoes. “And according to my measures, you’re a foot-fault just waiting to happen.”
They each laugh as they stake out opposite sides of the net-less court, their vocal sounds seeming similarly erroneous and forced, each wishing silently for a return to fencing.