Little League Ruination

Striking out the batter when they were looking for a fastball
and you threw a curve, stealing second after a walk, hustling
around third, sliding into home on a sacrifice fly, fresh dirt
on the uniform, smell of the leather glove soft from linseed oil,
turning into a wise ass at fourteen, Saturday before a big game
drinking six packs with a friend who later became a cop going
out of his way to ticket Jews coming from synagogue. The
young coach who would one day die of a heroin overdose
pissed at your beer breath antics, firing the ball back at you
while warming you up before the first pitch that never
happened, the game canceled due to bad field conditions
after a summer downpour earlier that morning. Eighteen
fly by night years later, your twenties a waste of misguided
love affairs, hangovers, drug addiction, jobs like climate
change existing in a slow burn that most would never fail
to notice sucking the life out of the veins beneath their skin,
some home run king from the old days telling a guy bragging
about his own hero years that, yeah, sure, but now you’re
a roofer sweating summers close to death on slanted shingles
and I’m a meter reader for the water department while
Flanagan, who ought to be dead but isn’t, keeps telling that
story about the playoff game he didn’t strike us out in,
though his drunk arm really had the catcher’s mitt popping
right before the league called it all on account of mud
puddles surrounding the bases of our hearts and minds.

Michael Flanagan was born in the Bronx, N.Y. and currently lives on Prince Edward Island in Canada. Poems and stories of his have appeared in many small press periodicals across the U.S. His full length collection, Days Liken These (Luchador Press) is now out. His chapbook, a Million Years Gone won the 2009 Nerve Cowboy chapbook contest. It is available from Nerve Cowboy’s Liquid Paper Press.