i mean, i was black before too.

The air before me
is the flavor of
an oat cake popsicle.
Or a shoe box. 
Or the water sports
I’m not doing. 
So I sign for
a prescription
while all the world
is water sporting
in

Civil War Day was a staple at Reginald Middle School, implemented somewhere in the shady patriotism of the Reagan era before carrying through as tradition.

On my last night in Zhenjiang, the three other laowai and I—each of us western foreigners: three upstaters and a guy from Toronto—walk the condominium-lined miles out to the banks of the Yangtze river.

When it began, he was deep in the hole, backhanding a two-hopper toward left field, and he rushed the throw, scooping it up, a cloud of dirt trailing off his glove like a cape as he raised his left

Fifty cents for tickets in the bleachers—then. Fifty cents a railroad car to Pittsburgh.
A “marvel” they’d called it. Three tiers of steel, the façade terracotta, the balls off
the deck, bouncing.

Summers to Harridge, April 20, 1950: I am writing to inform you of the changes in the Washington ball park. It is rather difficult to explain but I will try to give you a picture.

Maybe you

I hated practice, but I loved you.

Well, if you're reading lips, you'll hear some words that are not necessarily used on family TV.

She grips the bat the proper way, the way Dad taught her. Right over left, the knuckles lined up like railroad tracks or piano keys, two of Dad’s many analogies thought up on the fly. Yet another:

It’s good, I think, that we forget.

Then she cupped my face in her hands just like my father and said, “You’re missing it!”

The year everyone was hitting home runs, Barry Bonds made lunch with his arms.

It was a slow curve—a big bender,
spinning against the trajectory
of the ball. It hung

The victim was the leadoff hitter for the Matsushima Baseball Ocean Temple Gods in the bottom of the first.

Letterman wore khakis and the camera angled up his crotch. I watched every night or set my VCR to record on the rare occasion I left my apartment.

His gravesite at Holy Cross Cemetery brought a lump to my throat.

Because fifteen feet and a quarter-sized hunk of aluminum is nothing against the smell of oiled leather...

Just mid-February but a day like summer

I saw Candy the next time I went out. And the time after that. And the time after that.

I suppose all sports officials are gods of a sort...

After a loss, I’d seen him throw his gear in the garbage and denounce baseball altogether.

Crack! The sound of impact, ball on bat...

In the original cut of the movie, Ray says, “You wanna have a catch?” But test audiences were disappointed with the complete lack of father-son acknowledgement.

My friends lived for bottle rockets and Boy Scout merit badges; I, however, lived for called third strikes.

I couldn’t cut my hair (I’m no sheep) and I sure as hell couldn’t change my love of the Houston Astros.

I ended up in right field, ponytail eschew, cap falling to the bridge of my nose, shadowing my freckled cheeks.

I don’t think it made a sound.

Feels impossible
like trying to slice
a tomato with the
Wrong Knife
like trying to heal
with the Wrong Love

-

I am the evening flower
bloom at night
you are crows feet
crocodile eyes
a

“It’s time to choose,” the prison warden gruffly informed the man on death row.