What I learned from Ken Burns’ Baseball
The history of baseball is also the history of the Paris Review is also learning
to appreciate Jim Croce despite my father’s distaste because you love him
& sure he has a great mustache is also sitting on peanut shells & telling
your neighbor this is going to be the year they bring it home is also no one
rooting for the Nationals at a home game which I suppose explains
how we got such cheap seats so easily is also the history
of sexualizing men in skin tight white pants is also waking up
with the blanket on the floor is also putting your heart & soul into Little League
is also snapping your throwing tendon & never playing again
is also forearm tattoos is also rooting for the Red Sox purely out of spite
but helping me land safely on the Blue Jays is also seeing
how Babe Ruth was the spitting image of my grandfather who pretended
to eat my baby toes who loved planes & radios who wrapped towels
around table corners so I would not toddle forward & take
my eye out who would set up the good speakers & folding lawn chair
in the backyard to listen to the Rangers game a tornado forming
somewhere is also the history of spiking shins & racing home with the hazard
lights blinking in a hailstorm is also watching the ball go go go
Madison Lazenby is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet raised in Virginia, educated in central New York, and currently based in Indiana. She graduated from Hamilton College and has received support from Brooklyn Poets, the Kettle Pond Writers’ Residency, and the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. Her work has been recognized and published by the Academy of American Poets, Red Weather, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Metphrastics.