Third Base

I threw a curve-bale into your baseball metaphor,
diverted paradise by the dashboard lights
before you could slide yawing-screen-door-
apple-pie home, sunburnt child,
for I was my own Pandemonium
in the sticky backseat, un-fuck-up-able
and burning bright at the rest stop of the night,
a fearsome to mortal hand or eye.
I beaned you with an aghast-ball
in the midst of your spring refulgence,
as you allocated yourself along crisp, white lines
dividing a forthright field, 
magnanimous toward bomb pops 
and toddlers and lawn chairs, guileless 
golden retrievers un-lethally charging
fleet squirrels, which I flipped inside-out
with my stories of a childhood scavenging
roadkill to bring back to an old board
where I watched the maggots eat it.
I know what a body entails,
what muscular gnarls and slick gloves 
your hand would trouble should you try 
to steal your way onto the scoreboard.
Pay attention, tiger. No deftness nor daring
shall lure me back to that Eden I left
of my own, free will, with a mouthful 
of something fresh and wrong.


​

Owen Lubozynski is a freelance writer and editor living in the Twin Cities. Copy is her bread and butter; poetry is her jam.