Two Fables About Isolation Basketball on ESPN

H-O-R-S-E 

From behind the hoops teetering in uncertain spring wind, held firm by sand bags leaking hourglass steady, shooters factor air, arcade style swaying, and the goal itself to match maxed out stars past and present concerning themselves only with a clean arc over the treetop, navigating weather or metal spokes veining up to a gym ceiling, never both in elusion of the next character. 

MORAL: Rimless naked backboards line the public courts.

The Last Dance

The scabs in Old Jordan’s venerated wake interrogated in a close up, the silhouette scrunching to focus as the moist cheeked meme buckling like a compensating muscle, the writhing of his defense satisfying expectations of greatness.

MORAL: Young Jordan, champion, spooning the too thin leg of a massage table pressing tears into a basketball’s tacky dimples as a security guard drapes a white towel across his nameplate.

Alex Wells Shapiro is a poet and artist from the Hudson Valley, living in Chicago. He reads submissions for Another Chicago Magazine and Frontier Poetry, is a co-founder of Exhibit B: A Reading Series presented by The Guild Literary Complex, and mentors with the PEN America Prison Writing Program. His work is recently published or forthcoming Blood Tree Literature, The Tulane Review, Boudin, Pangyrus, and Digging Through the Fat. More of his work may be found atwww.alexwellsshapiro.com.