Vapor of Breath

All hail Michigan Dogman. All
slobber and standing seven feet
tall, Michigan Dogman sounds

howls like he’s missing a muffler
yet we’re never quite sure if it was
him or the

When I was a freshman in college (many years ago, before the marriage and the children and the divorce and the loss of faith in God), I saw a man order eight McDoubles at a McDonald’s on campus and then proceed to eat them all.

I’m meeting a friend for drinks and a Friday night concert; work is days, a train ride and a major city away. 

the babies are most dangerous because
            they have not learned how to control their venom
                        the way we make the same decisions over and over and over

I’ve been tasked with digitizing my father’s slides, a hundred or so he inherited from his aunt.

While they wrote about the never-ending snowstorm in the first pages of their novel: outside of their apartment, snow began to fall.

~

It was four days into the snow, into writing their novel,

i am your man

tall stranger man
you have sung a lot of songs 
you fall in love often
and maybe
you lose some things along the way
but everything is all right
and none of this matters

I was going to see Verdi’s Falstaff with Robin.  My driver said “I hate Bill de Blasio. The MTA is corrupt. Uber is corrupt. I’ve been driving taxi since 1993. I know New York, you said Lincoln Center

I watched Jim Johnson try to close out the 9thin front of a half-capacity Camden Yards. My father was supposed to come, but he was six blocks up at Mercy Hospital relearning to use the left side of

And yet, when it came to hitting a baseball, I always liked my odds.

The solidity of contact is registered first in the hands. The knowledge radiates outward from there. 

I have torn up the boy whose baseball
You are signing again.
He was beautiful,
As you are, Brooks Robinson,
As you lean your name back, a lefty’s autograph,
Your glove hand, the one that

“You can’t pee here,” Brendan tells me as I climb inside the doorway leading into the belly of the Green Monster. What he means is that you shouldn’t pee here. Manny Ramirez did once, during the

Old Seals Stadium is a shopping center now. It is a parking lot, a grocery store, a 24 Hour Fitness, a Ross Dress for Less, a Japanese dollar store. I get all my errands done at old Seals Stadium—all

I’m sitting on our carpet, legs crossed, beer in my crotch. 

It's their first practice in good spring weather,
not only not raining, not cold, but full of light.

good game
good game
good game

He said that Thompson could be the fastest to hit five hundred, a first ballot Hall of Famer, but I just nodded and sipped my coffee.

Blessed be the millwrights on the open hearth that awaited him; the nurses and elevator operators; secretaries; plumbers; electricians

Wrigley had put out a study claiming that gum chewing increased performance on assessments and my elementary school took it as gospel, sending letters home asking for us to bring it on test days. Marshall brought Big League Chew. 

The first doctor who called said I couldn’t play. The scan showed stress fractures and the only remedy was rest. It would have been a blessing the diagnosis came between seasons but, for me,

Gaylord Perry toiled for twenty-two seasons in the majors, and the look on his face suggests it was hard toil indeed.

The solitude. In the summer, I dine. On hot dogs. And fast balls. Go Dodgers!

Take your pick. Me, they said I hung my off-speed stuff, lost track of the count, lacked mental toughness. I waved off too many signs.

I joined the crowd and bought an XL.

When I am young I wish I were invisible so that the white boys will stop screaming, “Go back where you came from.”