Trout, Fishing in America
By Stu Shea
Isn’t it enough that he can hit a ball to hell?
Does he have to take away others’ home run balls as well?
Yes, he plays the outfield and runs like Joe D.–
What bait does one use to land such as he?
Carpe Tomorrow ?
by Barbara Gregorich
Now pales
beside Next.
Call waiting
beats call existing
.         every time.
Blue-star
free agents
glow brighter
than earthbound
team members
.         every time.
Never had
call waiting,
but if I did
I’d ignore it
.         every time.
I cheer
the team
that takes
the field —
and not the one
some baron’s
scheming.
.              Every time.
Barbara’s new book, Jack and Larry, chronicles the love affair between Cleveland slugger Jack Graney and Larry, the team’s American bull terrier mascot (the only live mascot ever used by a major league team) in verse form. Read more about it and order a copy here.
A Little Chin Music
by Hilary Barta
If a batter stays cool in the box
He’s a grad of the school of hard knocks
Leaning in on the plate
Means his chin has a date
With a thousand unnatural shocks.
Hilary’s blog delivers doggerel limerick goodness every day, on film noir, monster movies and other bits of pop culture. Check it out at LimerWrecks.
The Crowd at the Ball Game
by William Carlos Williams
The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them —
all the exciting detail
of the chase
and the escape, the error
the flash of genius —
all to no end save beauty
the eternal –
So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful
for this
to be warned against
saluted and defied —
It is alive, venomous
it smiles grimly
its words cut —
The flashy female with her
mother, gets it —
The Jew gets it straight – it
is deadly, terrifying —
It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution
It is beauty itself
that lives
day by day in them
idly —
This is
the power of their faces
It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is
cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail
permanently, seriously
without thought
From The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams Vol 1:1909-1939 (New Directions Publishing Corporation ). Copyright by New Directions Publishing Corporation.