Ron Lauderbach

​Chicago Jazz Club
 
The place is packed, but we find hard seats in the back. Joe pays for a bottle of Macallan 18 with a couple of C notes and from our new, soft seats in front of the stage, we can talk to the musicians. The trumpet player tells me he bought his horn from Wynton Marsalis. Me and the Macallan believe him. The band finishes with “When It’s Sleepytime Down South” and “Embraceable You.” The next day I can’t remember the name of the club, but I can’t forget the jazzed trumpeter who loves his horn with a calligraphy WM engraved on its bell.

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Exports
 
The world says we want it, if it comes from America. Send us hot dogs, ice cream cones, and Big Macs, complete with obesity and Type 2 Diabetes. And tacos too, even though they came from Mexico. Send us American jazz and Satchmo with his raspy New Orleans French and Coltrane blowing his American brass saxophone. Baseball  speaks Spanish, Japanese, and hundreds of other languages. The game is played in Cuba and North Korea, the only two countries in the world that do not sell Coca Cola. In 1990s Poland, people paid rent with Levi denim jeans. American vaccines traveled the Earth, all but ending smallpox, polio, measles, and mumps. Frisbees fly around the globe and there are Costcos  in 14 countries. 
 
 
                         A man in Hamburg
                         shot people in church
                         just like in America 
 
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Public Dog 

This two-dimensional dog looks friendly with a red bullseye circle around one eye. You can click on anything you want, and it disappears for an instant, as if to fetch your purchase, then comes back, center screen, to help you find something else. This dog is smart. It will show you how to pay with PayPal, Visa, or Venmo, or help you complete a store credit application. It will show you how to find past purchases and offers new, similar merchandise. Just yesterday, the dog got me a quart of half and half and, although I did not ask for it,  offered coffee beans. It is a compassionate canine that suggests contributions to local and international causes. Nobody seems to take care of the dog, but it appears well-fed and cheerful all the time. It is becoming an American Icon.
 
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A Guy I Used to Work For
 
If it appears I am not paying attention, he says at a teacher meeting, it’s most likely because I am multitasking. I recall a recent visit to his office, at  his request, when I waited for eye contact. As I stood there, I observed the icons in his office: diplomas, awards, a Chivas poster, and Tommy Lasorda and Vin Scully bobble heads. I watched him undress his secretary. He remanded me without looking up. I promised to improve and left. At the end of the teacher talk he adds, Though I will be multitasking, please know you will have my undivided attention.
 
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Baby Jesus Overwhelms Virgin Mary 
 
Months after the birth of Jesus Christ, Mary and Joseph are settling into parenthood at their small house in Nazareth. Mary contemplates Joseph as he planes a rail for Jesus’ bed and admits aloud the Son of God is pushing her to her limits. The boy cannot yet walk but speaks fluent Aramaic and wants to talk about nothing but ethics, religion, and God. Jesus has figured out that the census is a tax tool for Rome and says he doesn’t think his mother and Joseph should have headed down to Bethlehem so close to her time, especially because they had no prearranged accommodations. He has forgiven them, but Mary adds, He forgives everybody for everything. 
 
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This poem first appeared in Loch Raven Review.
 
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Catch
 
I sit with my father, looking out at the swimming pool he played in with grandchildren he no longer knows. When I tell him he should have paid me more to clean it in the sixties, he shrugs his shoulders. I pick up an Abraham Lincoln biography and notice he’s on the same page he was last week. It’s interesting how Abe picked his cabinet, I say. My father wrinkles his nose and chuckles. Setting sunlight reflects off the glass-covered photo of my father with his mixed-doubles tennis partner and sparkles in the diamonds set into the gold ring my mom insisted he buy to replace his simple wedding band, when they moved to Palm Springs. Hanging beside a letter from Ronald Reagan, he swears carries the President’s wet signature, is an appreciation award from the Southern California Lumbermen’s Association and an old photo of my mother wearing a bathing suit. My dad catches the ball I throw, looking at me with eyes I’ve never seen and slightly parted lips, his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth, like a lizard.
 
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​                                                                                                                                           
Cultural Ignorance 
                                                                                                         
The assignment was difficult, especially for English learners. Compare and contrast: Many students could not understand it, let alone do it. I had imagined my teaching experience would be like Robin William’s in The Dead Poets Society, but I was teaching in a public school. My students were not all white boys, but diverse, representing more than a dozen cultures. I was not teaching English literature, but English as a second language to teenagers, many of whom were reluctant to learn it. I am well-versed in English grammar and teaching strategies but knew little about my students’ cultures. Tram Nguyen submitted an exemplary essay. Not only did she compare and contrast, her paper contained an introduction that clearly stated her purpose, followed by claims and plenty of evidence. Her conclusion was complete, restating her findings with no surprises. In class, before I returned students papers, I stood beside Tram’s desk. I held her work up and explained why her writing was so successful, my right hand rested on her black hair. When I finished, I looked for a reaction. She turned to her friend and mouthed, He touched my head.
 
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                                                                         Downtown Rodeo
 
Petco Park bright lights flood any event that pays rent, and on this cool, January night, they shine on a rodeo. Fans can buy fourteen-dollar hot dogs and eighteen-dollar beers, sold in the stands by employees of phony charities. On imported dirt, an unbroken horse leaps and bucks to throw its rider on about the same spot Tatis Jr. missed a National’s grounder  that rolled into the outfield and let a winning run cross the plate. A lot of people are drunk because they brought plenty of money and there is no seventh inning at a rodeo. About four hundred feet from home plate, where Elton John played pian in his concert last year, a RAM pickup hauls a Brahma in an open trailer, to a pen down in front of the stands. A cowboy tries to ride it for eight seconds, as me and the beer cheer for the bull. 
 
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Trombone is the French Word for Paperclip
 
Ron Salisbury holds up a paperclip and informs the class the French word for it is trombone. I recognize the similar curves found in the wire clip and the horn’s tubing and have heard trombone players can goose the marcher in front of them by extending the slide to its seventh position. I can also imagine an errant clip dropping an internationally important document in Versailles mud. But then I think of Salisbury talking to the clip and the trombone in terms of numbered positions, as if he is trying to teach them ballet.
 
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This poem first appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual.
 
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​
Jobsite Talk 1960s
 
Bobby Gongora was a fast framer, but I remember him more for his skill of climbing framed walls, like an animal, using only his fingers and toes. He rarely spoke and when he did, it was about sex or carpentry. I can’t remember the name of the joister who got fried in Alpine when a strand of his long, sweat-wet hair fell into the connection of his Skilsaw plug and an extension cord. The superintendent was always called a name similar to shit-for-brains. Bill Knauer ended an argument with his wife by firing a round through a TV and shouting, Who’s next? Spider could never find his tape measure and Hog Man told him if it was up his ass, he’d know where it was. Older guys talked about local magnates like Trepte, Golden, and Hazard, who we thought were building the world, and Ronnie Thomas kissed their asses by saying he would like to see solid concrete from La Jolla to El Centro. There seemed to be unlimited resources, like when a customer used fifty cents worth of electricity to cut four inches off a perfectly good stud and wrote with a too-big carpenter pencil, Meet me at Vaquero’s, 6 am. Everybody talked about Tony Rosenlund, the golf pro developer who set his secretary up in a Santee apartment to take care of his favorite subcontractors. He took me up in his Citabria where we did everything but crash and scraped a wingtip landing at Gillespie Field. The FAA was still investigating the incident when he blew his brains out. A lot of days, after crews rolled up, we went to the Doll House and watched Jake’s girlfriend dance.
 
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This poem first appeared in Loch Raven Review.

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Ron Lauderbach a San Diego poet who writes poetry to entertain and preserve memories. He is a retired English/journalism teacher with an MFA poetry from San Diego State University. His work is in several journals including: Mudfish, The Chiron Review, I70 Review, The MacGuffin, San Diego Union, Saturday Evening Post, Reader's Digest, San Diego Poetry Annual, Loch Raven Review, and more. He won honourable mention in the Steve Kowit Poetry contest and has a chapbook entitled Snapshots.