Strikeout
for Kerry Wood
After each “K”
he whirled to say,
“got ’em again.”
With a click
of the wrist,
not quite a fist,
at 20, we thought
20 would happen
again, but
on the grainy
screen, a pimpled
teen sipped
from the clouds,
a sky he couldn’t
find again
until his ceiling
fell in on him.
Recording
for the 2015 NL Division Series clincher
As Harry Caray sings
the seventh inning stretch
I grieve, my hands pour
toward the grainy signal
filling the living room.
My father is at the game
and is so tired of hearing
this song, its lament.
As if to whisper
to him, I think:
it’s over, it’s almost
over, and since
I want to believe,
I wipe my cheek.
Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a full-length collection of poetry from Sundress Publications (2015). She is also the author of four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays. Sandra’s poetry and prose appear in Poet Lore, Blackbird, Subtropics, Ecotone, Southwest Review, Mid-American Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere.