August 2020
Bio Note: It is the year of confinement and fear, and we are without many of our usual
distractions and pleasures. This poem is from my manuscript-in-progress.
Seventh Game of the World Series and I Have a One-Day Breakdown
How ‘bout them Dodgers: your rhetorical change-up from politics or personal line-drive to the gut. Why won’t you say you love me? Why don’t you call your mother? My questions, then your question How ‘bout them Dodgers. We don’t talk about the ways our parents fouled us, or worse, strikeout after strikeout of our own. See the ball, hit the ball, you taught our children. Lesson enough? I wonder. But, O those hot dog and peanut- eating evenings, the cotton-candy sky dissolving to deep blue, us in the stadium with our crew, spring, summer, sometimes fall, See the ball, hit the ball How ‘bout them Dodgers, think they’ll make it to the fall? I’m told that’s what you were saying when you biked into the sunrise when the errant driver didn’t see you, didn’t see that he would hit you, end your season in the summer. How ‘bout them Dodgers.
Originally published in Shrew
©2020 Donna Hilbert
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