Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Wednesday, August 03, 2016

AT A BASEBALL GAME ON A HOT SUMMER NIGHT

by Jill Crainshaw


Image source: MiLB.com



class a farm team
a mid-sized southern city
girl in yellow crocs
toddler size 11
“Oh, say can you see?”

her hand over her heart
scrutinizing a standard star-showered
stalwart and still
while summer cicadas whirred and thrummed
“What so proudly we hailed.”

my phone buzzed
glass dome fragmenting
“first woman nominated by a major party”
while a hometown soprano soloed
“At the twilight’s last gleaming.”

does she see, this croc-clad citizen?
the spangled signpost unfurling
a wished-upon possibility too-long postponed
“O’er the land of the free
and the home of the brave.”

“Madam President” i whispered
into the breeze of the soaring anthem
and a girl in yellow crocs jumped up and down
as fans cheered the first batter up


Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and a Presbyterian minister. Her work has appeared in Star 82 Review, Mused: Bella Online Literary Review, and Panoplyzine. She is a frequent contributor to the Unfundamentalist Christians blog.