Mostly because things started getting a little too real—we remember the casting call where we learn that he has a deep need to be loved, of fights both real and simulated, of not knowing how to talk to anyone who doesn’t resemble northeast Ohio, of wanting to talk with strangers on the rooftop.
Read MoreI heard a rumor he punched an Astros fan.
I heard a rumor he was beefing with said Astros fan
the whole game, sad Astros fan
poured beer all over mad Dodgers fan
before the long wait to
see
Read MoreWith their high flying, I suppose it’s not a bad
nickname for a baseball team. Once, I had an experience
with a certain Satélite. But it wasn’t high flying.
High driving maybe. Intoxicated by the bus driver’s
Read MoreDodgeball was called War. We played the game so happily, With such violence, black eyes, Sprained fingers and wrists, A ball snapped my head back And my body followed.
Read MoreOur father, in a rare gesture toward sport, nailed a basketball hoop to the huge cottonwood tree in the back south acre of our yard. It was 1957; I was six. Soon grass was trampled, the earth flattened, hardened, by the high school basketball team my brother was a member of. The boys balanced and then nailed a board on a fallen tree trunk near the court, used it to throw their shirts and towels on, used it for the giant jug of water my mother would carry out to them, and for the glasses to drink from—I carried those, wrapped in dish towels in a sack. Usually I wore a green shirt and a pleated white skirt in honor of their school colors. Ten years younger, I imagined myself their beloved mascot, saw my role as essential.
Read MoreWe drink from a wide-mouthed bottle, sugar and citrus painting our lips and our breath clementine. Amani dribbles an orange basketball, the tin ring of rubber and air echoing across the blacktop—tar and gravel: feel the vibrations running through the ground and into him like sunlight.
Read MoreShe leans against that long swoop of metal. A small town in Wisconsin with a public court lit after dark. I tell her that this is not like home. She lets the ball fall from the crook of her wrist. It bounces itself into a kind of drumroll, a decrescendo of higher pitched notes that bleed into one another while I taste the salt of sweat and summer
Read MoreI. Fly
In my earliest memory, I am running full-speed down someone’s concrete driveway, maybe my grandmother’s. I am clutching a croquet mallet, might be chasing a runaway ball. Small craters filled with gravel rush up at me. Cut to the bright lights above the dentist chair. Not my dentist. Maybe my grandmother’s. They sit me up and hand me a small orange eraser in the shape of a bear, like a gummy but opaque. You were brave they say. What a brave girl. And maybe, Slow down.
Read MoreBarbara Carroll Roberts grew up in northern California. She holds a B.A. in English from Occidental College and Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University. Her first novel, Nikki On the Line was a 2019 Parents’ Choice Recommended award winner. Roberts has two grown children and lives in northern Virginia with her husband, one ridiculously energetic Springer spaniel, and two cats.
Read MoreNovember 5, 2004
Dear Brett Favre,
I’m not the kind of guy who travels halfway around the world to find his father and then finds his father alive. I’m the guy who fucks up on the way and finds disaster at the end, except. Maybe. Oxygen.
Read MoreWe have a predilection to abuse
antidepressants we are both tornadoes
of trailer trash who learned to skate
a bottle of bleach makes us lighter
to the cameras, the hand-sequined
leotard says frosting and cupcake
Read MoreThis is how we live our lives
fitting in errands between
snowfalls: Wednesday morning,
Friday night, Saturday night
again.
Read MoreThe first time I questioned my decision to move from Hawaii to Korea was, not surprisingly, winter. Back home, cold doesn’t happen without consent. Not so in Korea. If my first winter in Seoul taught me anything about existential threats from the north, it’s that Siberian winds make daily life a lot more unlivable than any nuclear artillery. I took fatalistic comfort in knowing that if North Korea ever attacked, at least we’d all die together. I felt just as helplessly unprepared for the winter, but I had to face the cold on my own.
Read MoreMy legs ungodly sore, stiff in plastic manacles,
face blown raw by wind, snot frozen,
I was done skiing,
but couldn’t sell that to my father
who had bought the lift ticket,
spent the day training me,
urged me just once more up the lift.
Read MoreSome see a long coarse braid
in its place between shoulder blades.
I see a man. Slung over in a rusty truck,
asleep against the back seat,
after he whispered for whiskey bright
the night before.
Read MoreBrenton and Florence met in typical romantic-comedy style: She accidentally spilled beer on him at a baseball game. Captivated by Florence’s beauty—and the kismet of them both wearing jerseys emblazoned with his favorite player’s name and number—Brenton assured her he didn’t mind watching the rest of the game in damp socks and sneakers. He continued the conversation, best he could, by spouting statistics and cracking corny jokes. She smiled sweetly at his lame attempts at humor, but her attention was focused on the field. After their team won, he invited her to join him for a celebratory dinner. She politely declined, saying she had a boyfriend.
Read MoreNow that our breakup’s official, I think it’s only fair that I return the things you left behind in my apartment. Contained within the brown box below you’ll find the following items:
Head-banging Heavy Metal Hits CD. No longer having to subject my ears to any of these songs might just be the biggest benefit of our breakup.
Pitcher: All things have a source:
the cold water of the Mississippi
begins quietly under the pines and birch
where a small stream speaks
its first words: Rock. Cloud.
Read MoreHer enormous wings cover us all
when she drifts in over the baseball field
like a storm cloud. She means well, comes often;
this year she has a crush on the pitching staff.
Read MoreThe Devil’s Snake Curve opens in a reverie. We are dropped into the lush outfield of a youth baseball game with Josh Ostergaard, who will serve as our narrator over the course of this wry and genre-agnostic book. Rather than attend to his fielding duties, the 11-year-old Ostergaard has placed his glove on the ground so he can sample clover in deep left field.
Read More