Text
Well you are what you eat.
It’s a character flaw, but I play catcher on this team
and I hold them just fine.
No spitter, quitter, or heavy-hitter,
I survive these boys and their blows each summer,
learning as all late bloomers eventually do
sucking can be a real talent.
We learn a specific kind of survival here
where I grew up alongside one of thirteen
Ronald Reagan Memorial Highways
becoming a lavatory fixture
unlike my father ever dreamed.
He asked me was it really that bad in our town,
where a boy we used to know disappeared
with an extension cord and closet door.
That week, the team made t-shirts
that read Better Of Dead,
wrapped a pair of gym shorts
around my neck to drag me kicking–
Sorry. I’m not trying to upset you.
This all happened a long time ago.
Let me try again:
I think language bears history like branch scars,
accumulating skyward
until the whole organism folds under its weight.
From this trunk I carved myself a bat.
I mean I carved a shield. I mean I was born
just like everyone
on a rotting nurse log, fighting for scraps and sun,
slow possum and witch egg
learning a tongue for prick mushroom
at the bottom of this hill
I’ve tumbled down enough times to learn
if you keeping hitting bottom,
bottom starts to hit back.
It’s a character flaw, but I play catcher on this team
and I hold them just fine.
No spitter, quitter, or heavy-hitter,
I survive these boys and their blows each summer,
learning as all late bloomers eventually do
sucking can be a real talent.
We learn a specific kind of survival here
where I grew up alongside one of thirteen
Ronald Reagan Memorial Highways
becoming a lavatory fixture
unlike my father ever dreamed.
He asked me was it really that bad in our town,
where a boy we used to know disappeared
with an extension cord and closet door.
That week, the team made t-shirts
that read Better Of Dead,
wrapped a pair of gym shorts
around my neck to drag me kicking–
Sorry. I’m not trying to upset you.
This all happened a long time ago.
Let me try again:
I think language bears history like branch scars,
accumulating skyward
until the whole organism folds under its weight.
From this trunk I carved myself a bat.
I mean I carved a shield. I mean I was born
just like everyone
on a rotting nurse log, fighting for scraps and sun,
slow possum and witch egg
learning a tongue for prick mushroom
at the bottom of this hill
I’ve tumbled down enough times to learn
if you keeping hitting bottom,
bottom starts to hit back.