Here’s a new baseball-ish poem, in early draft form. Enjoy.
SEVENTH INNING STRETCH
no longer languishing, exactly, the game still
struggles clumsily through afternoon’s nappy haze of
candycorn, indigestion, to find a semblance of an edge.
six or so innings in, the whole contest’s become
benign, seems a world-weary quarrel between two
old, old friends; a backslap-and-handshake, all but
foreordained. we know each batter’s hacks as no
more and no less than an old sous chef’s trick,
cheaply mimed: a dulled knife’s failed serrations half-
heartedly drawn across and along the ceramic base
of some sale-rack-chipped mug un-cupboarded solely
for this one odd purpose, this one steely goal.
our attentions, too, are a makeshift sort
of honing; a defensive indifference on limpid display;
each next glance askew and somehow reduced – a lazy
curve breaking, an incurious arc just barely blinking
before its bottom falls out and it ends up in the dirt, cast
just aside. but, deep down our desire’s a pitcher,
as full as this three-and-two count, still ready to balk
or crest and pour forth at slightest provocation, some
simple sign. so: we wish the beer vendors just
one section closer; those frosty tallboys within our
reach. we mine coarse salt from popcorn bags empty
as a bullpen deep in extras. and we are then become
blood, we are then become pressure; rising. we are
a surface, we are a tension. we are suddenly anxious
to spill over this table waiting to be set; we are – despite
our once-yawned disinterest – pure appetite, now
whet.
—
MATT ROBINSON 
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