Third and Long
- Third and Long
August's dogs tight against their chains.A man opens fire at a sandlot football gameand the neighborhood eats dirt.
One thing that isn't rigged against us—there goes the last picnic. The last chickenbone choking off the weeping whistles.
A torn t-shirt stanches the wound.An enormous wail from the fat ladyand everybody knows this isn't over.
The kids in their overgrown shoulder padskneel in a circle around the absence of a coachmemorizing the zeroes of the scoreboards.
A tinted car cruises past, talking in tongues.August's dogs tear into the schedule. [End Page 78]
Jim Daniels is the author most recently of Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry (Carnegie Mellon University Press), All of the Above (Adastra Press), and Trigger Man, short fiction (Michigan State University Press), all published in 2011. Birth Marks will be published by BOA Editions in 2013.
