from HOW TO WRITE A LOVE POEM IN A TIME OF WAR
Kristy Bowen
Sometimes I say novels ruined me in the way they ruin all young bookish girls, slowly and tenderly rotting out the light and making room for the sweet dark.
Sometimes I say novels ruined me in the way they ruin all young bookish girls, slowly and tenderly rotting out the light and making room for the sweet dark.
Remember, there’s a light emitting from you and it's not just your cellphone. / The Internet is a scorched wasteland. / But you've walked through worse places / on your way to work.
It means nothing now but it meant enough then, enough to change a life, to alter the smooth rhythmic turning of the world.
He doesn’t have any friends and doesn’t want any.
That’s the only way Mays can pitch,
because he doesn’t play the game
of fraternity formed on summer ballfields.
Me at my most beautiful. Me locked in. Me sacrifice stance.
He could say from experience
that Babe Ruth was an asshole,
but he never said it on the field.
That was the year Dave Kingman’s pop fly never came down at the Metrodome
Nineteen players were ejected during the Padres/Braves brawl
Angel Mike Witt threw a perfect game against the
Before the nasty glances, which I sense to be for me, I shake my downcast head, grin in disappointment, and mutter “Damn.”
While waiting in my car outside your house I counted thirteen wrinkled ticket stubs I’d tucked inside the glovebox after games
to serve as some reminder of the season so far.
Baseball is, if nothing else, a reason, and so it is everything:
I’m thankful for the throwaways. Like the time the Bears lost in extra innings. Randy Bass, pre-Hanshin Tigers Randy Bass, had committed an error on a routine toss to the pitcher at first. It was
Then something funny happened / after months of imprisonment, / handled like/ animals, less than/ animals, / they started playing baseball.
Dear Editor, or Owl
Attached are poems in which I spin my head three hundred sixty degrees attempting to stare at myself. Attached are poems in which I attempt to eat myself
I want to be a zygote again. / I want to be a dumb plant.
When clearly it could be a mommy or even a child for that matter.
I have watched too much reality TV about Kimye and teen mothers. This is why I cannot explain April like a normal person.
Is this new relationship self-sabotage in disguise, or is it the cure?
Garielle's longest, most peculiar, most particularized book. A sure-to-be collector's item. Not be be missed!