The Under Review - Issue 4 | Summer 2021

13
God, Bowling
CHRIS ABBATE
When the thunderclap was a cosmic crash, when it shook
the foundation of the house until the vibration rippled upstairs
to the room my brother and I shared,
we called it a strike.
And when it sounded like a train that had passed,
a rumbling in the distance, the sky merely clearing its throat,
we admitted that even God sometimes threw a gutter ball.
The only picture of my grandfather I remember
is of him in a suit and tie holding a bowling ball to his heart,
eyeing pins at the end of a lane.
His obituary from 1959 read, Giuseppe Stefano, Expert Duckpin Bowler;
not what my mother had told me about him –
farmer, immigrant, factory worker, gardener –
but rather, what I imagined him to be –
herder of storm clouds, gatherer of sky,
hands that make thunder.
ISSUE 4 | SUMMER 2021