2013 NL East Prediction Haiku
By Stuart Shea
BRAVES
Georgia is the world’s
Top pecan supplier. Plus
Andrelton Simmons
MARLINS
Why is a fish tank
So fascinating to watch?
Billion-dollar chum.
METS
No, it’s not a joke!
Cowgill and Valdespin are
In center field now
NATIONALS
Unnatural arm,
Unbelieveable results–
Can Strasburg stay fit?
PHILLIES
The old and infirm
Are the last to know that they
Are old and infirm
2013 AL West Prediction Haiku
By Stuart Shea
HOUSTON
Welcome to the league!
You youngsters enjoy yourselves
As you lose each day
LOS ANGELES
Trout Fishing in spring…
Or Prince Albert in a can?
Is Ryan Mad, son?
OAKLAND
Bartolo Colon
Is still suspended. So…more
food in the clubhouse?
SEATTLE
Raul Ibanez
Played for Seattle during
Bill Clinton’s first term
TEXAS
Replacing Josh H.
With Martin and Gentry? That’s
Carob for dessert
Order in the Bleachers
by James Finn Garner
Three cheers for Justice Sotomayor!
The “wise Latina” knows what summer break’s for.
She’s not with Dick Cheney, slaughtering birds,
Or at a think-tank retreat with blue-suited nerds.
Sonia got the hell out of Washington quickly
Went up to the Bronx and, not being picky,
Bought a ticket and dog, and hunkered down grinning
In the right field bleachers with a guy named “Bald Vinnie”
She cheered while her Bombers flattened the O’s,
Heckled Zach Britton and lauded Cano.
While it’s doubtful this impacts much of her work,
I think she should hire Bald Vinnie as clerk.
Home Run Derby
by Dave Landsberger
Much like most of life, to be enjoyed it must be muted.
Best to enjoy the thronging, the boozing, the outmuscling
and tearing at t-shirts with cuticles
for the simplest of circles—silently.
Like cousins’ command chain while lost in a mystical and kid-appropriate forest
the rules of the bleachers are a cartoon-island democracy,
constituted with the concerns of treehouse parliaments:
escape routes, beach balls, dibs.
Lest not be forgotten those valiantly volunteering for target practice!
Birthday donkeys in the bleachers,
tails and nails clusterbombing down—
is it fireworks? Or is it cowhide? American meteorites?
Cheering harmonizing with ooing and ahhing.
From mitt, to hand, to bat, to sky, to television,
the home run lodges itself in the muted “O” of the play-by-playman’s mouth,
domesticated for a brief lease,
socializing its achievement in banister-blazing bars named for grandmothers.
If Mussolini had come to America,
if he tossed free shoes from his trucks down these neon American vistas,
it would be something like this,
something like the joyous handout that is the Home Run Derby—
the concoction of the convenience store parking lot cabinet, the basement brain trust,
the patriotic powwow and its unfurling of its flag/tarp
as the switchboard hand hinges down the cover to the missile defense system.
Today, in the beefy cheesy burrito commercial
I learned that catching home runs is honorable.
It suggested the experience was singular,
but without audio the burrito steamed triumphant
and now I sit shellacked, hungry, and deafened,
staring through the TV savagely as my attention turns its gajillionth channel.
Dave Landsberger’s first chapbook, “Whoa, Yeah, Baby,” can be read at floatingwolfquarterly.com. This poem first appeared on the Windy City sports website, ChicagoSide, where Dave is the poet-in-residence.
Home Run
by Owen P.
Yesterday we played, we played baseball
the pitcher pitched and I whacked the ball
it flew over Maine
and a Japanese train
it flew over a polar ice cap
it was seen by some English chaps
some soldiers saw it in Afghanistan
and as it flew it learned Uzbekistan
it flew over the Great Barrier Reef
in North Dakota it sampled some beef
but just as it landed in Moscow
the umpire called it foul
Owen P. is a fifth-grade student in Chicago.
