Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Baseball in the Living Room
- Through the yellow roses on the coffee table
- I peer at the ball game, tired of Whitman, tired
- of wanting to be great.
- “Holy cow,” roars the announcer,
- “walk him walk him,” Dad hollers,
- my parents planted in their twin recliners, suited up
- in silk pajamas — and when it’s Miller time Dad
- limps to the kitchen with his bad hip, there’s the chink
- of spoon and glass as he mixes the nightly dose of meta-mucil —
- Mom turns to me with that sigh of surrender:
- “since the surgery,” she says,
- “all he wants to do is watch baseball.”
- Five to three. Top of the eighth.
- Leary pitching.
- “Who do you think our pin-up boy’s gonna be this year?”
- jokes one of the guys — and I stare at these beauties,
- the hard butts, the kind
- you want to sink your nails into.
- The first baseman slides one hand
- over his hip, wets his bottom lip —
- I think he wants me
- then the black one leans over the plate
- ready to swing — he means business, that look
- you want to see when a man’s
- on top of you — these men in their prime,
- I’d take any one of them
- right now on this couch — Dad snoring,
- I should go to bed, finish The Body Electric, sleep...
- Gonzales fouls one,
- spits a stream of tobacco, a thick gold chain ribs
- his neck like a rein, wild eyes
- dark as river stone —
- Mom’s drifting now, her head makes little bobs
- before she catches it
- somewhere in a field of consciousness.
- Berryhill slams it to third, the crowd
- leaps to their feet — everyone’s going nuts,
- the full moon, my bare legs, the ball low and outside.
Deborah Harding Allbritain
Deborah Allbritain’s poems have appeared in Stand Up Poetry, The Unmade Bed, In the Palm of Your Hand, The Antioch Review, Autism Digest, and many other journals and anthologies. She works as a speech pathologist for the Poway Unified School District, where she specializes in students with autism spectrum disorder. “Baseball in the Living Room” originally appeared in The Taos Review and has also appeared in the online journal Dipping into Light and in the poetry teaching guide In the Palm of Your Hand.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Baseball in the Living Room
Baseball in the Living Room
- Through the yellow roses on the coffee table
- I peer at the ball game, tired of Whitman, tired
- of wanting to be great.
- “Holy cow,” roars the announcer,
- “walk him walk him,” Dad hollers,
- my parents planted in their twin recliners, suited up
- in silk pajamas — and when it’s Miller time Dad
- limps to the kitchen with his bad hip, there’s the chink
- of spoon and glass as he mixes the nightly dose of meta-mucil —
- Mom turns to me with that sigh of surrender:
- “since the surgery,” she says,
- “all he wants to do is watch baseball.”
- Five to three. Top of the eighth.
- Leary pitching.
- “Who do you think our pin-up boy’s gonna be this year?”
- jokes one of the guys — and I stare at these beauties,
- the hard butts, the kind
- you want to sink your nails into.
- The first baseman slides one hand
- over his hip, wets his bottom lip —
- I think he wants me
- then the black one leans over the plate
- ready to swing — he means business, that look
- you want to see when a man’s
- on top of you — these men in their prime,
- I’d take any one of them
- right now on this couch — Dad snoring,
- I should go to bed, finish The Body Electric, sleep...
- Gonzales fouls one,
- spits a stream of tobacco, a thick gold chain ribs
- his neck like a rein, wild eyes
- dark as river stone —
- Mom’s drifting now, her head makes little bobs
- before she catches it
- somewhere in a field of consciousness.
- Berryhill slams it to third, the crowd
- leaps to their feet — everyone’s going nuts,
- the full moon, my bare legs, the ball low and outside.
Deborah Harding Allbritain
Deborah Allbritain’s poems have appeared in Stand Up Poetry, The Unmade Bed, In the Palm of Your Hand, The Antioch Review, Autism Digest, and many other journals and anthologies. She works as a speech pathologist for the Poway Unified School District, where she specializes in students with autism spectrum disorder. “Baseball in the Living Room” originally appeared in The Taos Review and has also appeared in the online journal Dipping into Light and in the poetry teaching guide In the Palm of Your Hand.
Comments