BASEBALL

 Amanda Wochele

He is playing baseball:

pelvis, dancing hip,

elbows jab

Pythagorean. He

lunges his abdomen,

scalping earth on

femur bones,

into knee folds –

He spends afternoons

in animation: warm

marmalade spreads

into

strawberry-skin again

and again, bursting seeds

in constellation... with

crooked lips he spits,

then grins.

He was the small kid,

slip-through-a-fence kid,

quick and breathless

pony against the

wind. Now,

he’s the getaway:

he grows,

he levitates.

Fist of fingers raking

bushels of cowlick:

auburn, aster, brick.

Stains on shirts I want

to live in,

citrine clung to ankles,

shins. Soft soil under

celadon, he plays

baseball right in

front of me –

his limbs forming

angles I insert myself

between.

Amanda Wochele has an MA from Brooklyn College in English and American literature. She lives near Philadelphia, PA with her husband and two cats. Previously, her work has been published in A cappella Zoo, Black Lantern Press, Inwood Indiana, Whirlwind Magazine, and The Wordstock Ten.