Still Life

by Paul Kocak

That cinnamon voice
Ricocheting in the clubhouse
Keeping things loose
On the bench
And in the bleachers
No matter the score

Mays’ cinnamon spirit
Sprinkled on summer’s
Long afternoons
Les Keiter on WINS
Me with the transistor
San Francisco an eternity away

You never left
I wouldn’t let you
The Giants fled
I stayed
Your cap flying off
Still

Paul Kocak is the author of Chasing Willie Mays: Chronicles of a Fan Left Behind.

 

Baseball in July

by Tauwan Patterson

afternoon baseball awakens with the city in the west
pirates vs. marlins adorning the hanging television screen

around him
the day
leisurely stretches,
softly
it begins to
speak:

cars zoom by,
apartments rumble,
dogs shout good mornings at the sun
ke’bryan hayes steps up
to bat
knocks a sure footed
first inning triple
hit into right field

rounds one base,
then two, gone
with the wind
like his helmet
as he sprints towards parking
at third revealing
the tiniest neatest of ‘fros positioned
atop his dome like a crown

okay
sir,

we see you

keep our spirits alive

today’s gonna be alright

.

Tauwan Patterson is a Black + Queer Poet and recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. His work has appeared in online literary magazines Cool Beans Lit, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, and Muse-Pie Press’ Shot Glass Issue #41, and will also appear in the forthcoming Moonstone Arts Center anthology Which Side Are You On?!, the Winter Issue of Rise Up Review, Porkbelly Press’ Love Me, Love My Belly zine, the Rising Phoenix Review, the Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Amazine, and Arteidolia. With his poetry Tauwan aims to, in the words of the great poet and thinker Marcus Jackson, announce his freedom and presence. Making a sound that echoes in the end that says Tauwan Patterson. No more. No less.

“Love is Like a Baseball Game”

And then, 40 years later, these pioneers of Philly soul were captured on video at a census block party in the City of Brotherly Love.  What better examples of two gems of the American heritage that we must lovingly pass on to the next generation.

Have a happy and old-school Fourth of July, Bardballers! Stay safe!

(Video by KeishaRenee1991)

Road Trip!

I will be traveling until July 4, so the daily doggerel and weekly Substack email will resume then. You can still submit poems and songs, at the Submit tab above, and spend some time exploring our archives, stretching back to 2007! See you all soon!