Can We Have Our Ball Back?
Rent from DeepDyve- Can We Have Our Ball Back?
Levi’s mother liked vodka so much she stopped feeding himfor a week so he and I ate SpaghettiOs at my house.She loved beating him more than she loved Jesusand she would always share if I stayed over. Joshua’s fatherwalked through the house like a gun going offand actually put one to his head on a camping trip.My mom made Black Russians that would slap youupside the head if you weren’t careful and none of her friends were.Ian’s mom shot heroin between her toes with the needlesfrom the needle exchange so later on, after Ian dropped out,he shot heroin underneath his tongue. God was showing up everywherebut kept his big fat mouth shut. Motherfucker,can we, please, have our ball back?Anton came upstairs with his hand bleeding a little bitand said his girlfriend wouldn’t be going to the mall with us.I dropped two tabs of acidand rode through the neighborhood on the back of a polar bearbecause I thought they were beautiful and I was fourteen years oldand summer had finally passed outso we could all put our jackets on and look like we were kidswho couldn’t wait to carve pumpkins,walking house to house with bags of candy, dressed like ghosts. [End Page 112]
Matthew Dickman is the author of All-American Poem (American Poetry Review/Copper Canyon Press, 2008), 50 American Plays (co-written with his twin brother Michael Dickman, Copper Canyon Press, 2012), and Mayakovsky’s Revolver (W.W. Norton & Co, 2012). He is the recipient of the Honickman First Book Prize, the May Sarton Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Kate Tufts Award from Claremont College, and the 2009 Oregon Book Award from Literary Arts of Oregon. He is a 2015 Guggenheim recipient. Dickman is the Poetry Editor of Tin House Magazine. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
