by Howie Good
The man at the ticket window asks
for some identification.
My dark laughter?
The socket of my missing tooth?
I pass through the ancient turnstile.
The war is here and it’s not,
like a book on the nightstand
that you’ll never open.
I’m inconspicuous at the ballpark
in my threadbare mourning clothes.
The crowd is huge but sullen,
as if they know something
the players down on the field don’t –
that the starting pitcher will be betrayed
in the late innings by the bullpen,
that grass crumbles, that everything
that isn’t dying is already dead.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, including the free e-book, Police and Questions (Right Hand Pointing, 2008).
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