intentional walk

one monday late sophomore year in highschool our biology teacher, mr. buckley, limped into our 9:00 class a couple minutes late, which was unlike him. the only thing that happened between his entrance and two minutes before the end of class was my friend matt, nolan’s best friend and talented sketcher, drawing a cartoon with the caption “i dock my dinghy at the marina” and handing it to nolan. nolan’s mother, who he’s sensitive about, is named marina, so he said something to matt and buckley scolded nolan. as many announcers ad nauseum about cheap shots, it’s always the second guy who gets caught.

my dad thinks that joggers may not be morons—many of his best friends jog (true)—but that jogging’s a pretty moronic way of spending your time. my dad’s spent at least half an hour at least four days a week for the last 25 years stationary bicycling, treadmilling, or Stairmastering and, at 68, looks great. i don’t enjoy jogging, but also don’t understand how it significantly differs from my dad’s activities, and none of them strikes me as especially moronic. that being said, i join my dad in finding walking to be one of the most enjoyable ways of spending my time, and running one of the least. reading the following running-related poems by bill boslego, michael lee johnson, ann shivers mcnair, lois greene stone, jeffrey tucker, and la quan schoolfield constitutes my ideal personal relationship to my physically running.

It’s passionless but wet

of the first post-marathon beer

BILL BOSLEGO is a long-time marathoner whose most recent work has appeared in Big Pulp, The Literary Burlesque and Jerry Jazz Musician. He is currently writing short stories for a test prep workbook, and has appeared as an actor in minor roles on shows on HBO, The History Channel, Investigation Discovery TV and National Geographic TV. He lives in Virginia.

Sometimes I feel

I isolate your love.

MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON, Itasca, Illinois has been published in over 25 countries and is editor/publisher of five poetry sites. Visit his website at: http://poetryman.mysite.com./. His books From Which Place the Morning Rise, his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom and chapbooks are available to purchase at: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/promomanusa. Chapbooks, Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/challenge-of-night-and-day-and-chicago-poems-(night)/12443733. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, (ISBN: 978-0-59546-091-5), can be found at: http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000058168/The-Lost-American.aspx. Also Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.

Some days are far too modest for these forays down a new road, in a new country town. But Saturday’s kudzu and dust-lit air beg a runner down cracked pavement roads like this one. My foot-beats and breath-beats fall in time with the hawk’s head swiveling, eyes raking the ground, left-right-breathe-left-right-breathe. The synthetic reflector strips on my Nikes seduce the hawk for just a moment—his rhythm breaks with mine—but we are wise. I run past. Now my lungs disengage the bucolic air, one bronchial constriction at a time. Left-breathe-right-breathe, ragged: no hawk’s movements could echo this, and I am unwelcome. At the sight and smell of a newly dead doe roadside, I turn back, suck ungraciously on my inhaler.

ANN SHIVERS MCNAIR enjoys finishing a marathon. She studied poetry at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, where she currently teaches first-year and advanced writing and coordinates the basic writing program. Most recently, her work appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume II: Mississippi. She and her husband, Daniel, share a home with two rescued racing greyhounds.

The treadmill walk was terrible,
My thighs and calves got sore,
And leads into an EKG
Upset me even more.

Oh middle-age I hate you, but
Confirmed when test was done,
My insides were in decent shape
And stamped me: fit to run.

LOIS GREENE STONE, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies. Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian. “Certified” originally appeared in Green’s Education Publication.

Labor Day 2010

There are no pills left, the blue-whites
that rattle a mild sift down my throat.
Yes, withdrawal: legs and arms hiding from my head
as I run the Trace, former railroads
lined in post-oak, yaupon and sweetgum.
Birds climb the longleaf ceiling.
The lights, still orange, help numb feet
slap and twist like supplejack
on asphalt, still day-warm.
Watch these dead toes reach, find ground.
Today I heard a friend’s parents had divorced,
the friend who wasn’t a good one, who stole
cola from our neighborhood store
then nearly wrecked his gifted car.
Another friend’s father has cancer on his groin.
And I would have pills were today not a holiday,
the word slipping through my ticking mouth,
a slur of my own doing.

JEFFREY TUCKER is a graduate of The Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. He now teaches creative writing at Hampton University in Virginia. His work has appeared in Inscape, Tapestry, Poetry South, and elsewhere.

Shoes off, spikes on, sarcastic boy transforms,
now a competitor focused. His nervousness shifts
from his feet; it runs slowly up to his neck and head.
His head is filled. Endless random thought twisted
with his event. (400 meters, only about a minute.
Man, Chelsea’s looking cute, essay due tomorrow,
Mom wants me to clean the house when I get home.
Damn, FOCUS!) “Willie, can you stretch my hamstrings?”
(This race is too soon, it’s the last one] “Ah,
that’s good thank you. [Why am I so frustrated? Okay,
Okay deep breath calm yourself. In your nose out your
mouth, keep pace through the race.)

Burst past the line, turns around walks backs, No bending over.
“That’s what I’m talking about Pookie.” Coach smiles, he returns
the favor. “Guess your time?” “I don’t know.” “49.5. Those kids
had no chance.” He laughs (got to get a 48 next time).
The adrenaline pumping heart has calmed down, his brain too.
It was only about a minute. “Hey, Willie, my hamstrings?”
“Sure, I got you” (400 meters, I hate this race. At least
before it starts. Love it when it’s over.)

My name is LA QUAN SCHOOLFIELD; I was born in Springfield, Massachusetts where I went to school at Samuel L. Bowles Elementary. Between my tenth and eleventh year of age my mother made an executive decision to move to Meriden, Connecticut to live with my great grandmother. I was forced to switch schools from M. Marcus Kiley Middle School in Springfield to Lincoln Middle School in Meriden, but although it was a weird transition for me, I managed to find friends. I had only played organized sports once before I reached high school and that was soccer when I was nine. However, let’s just say that didn’t go so well. I went to Orville H. Platt High School, also in Meriden, and that’s when I really got into sports. I played football, and ran indoor and outdoor track. I was Varsity in both tracks beginning my freshman year in high school. This poem relates to how I disciplined my mind, and in a race I didn’t like at first. I learned to teach myself how to pace my mind in accordance with my body, in and out of school, and developed my maturity even more. My 400 meter races would range from 48-52 seconds. I think how amazing things can happen in a short amount of time. I am currently a junior English major at Western New England University; I love to write poetry, and also play for a rugby club.

last night i was sitting at bud rip’s, watching tony parker, rajon rondo, and deron williams compete in the nba skills challenge, in which each participant, fast as he can, lays it up, slalom-dribbles around three obstacles, throws a chest pass into a net, a bounce pass into a second net, shoots a twenty footer, throws a long pass from close to the basket into a third net, slalom-dribbles around a second set of three obstacles, and lays it up. congratulations to the san antonio spurs’ tony parker, who won by completing the course in the final round in 32.8 seconds.

having nothing to do with parker, rondo, and williams, all very exciting players, i couldn’t give a shit about the skills challenge. since basketball in all forms has greatly interested me since i was 6 i wondered why, and kept coming back to the fact that the skills challenge was essentially an exhibition, rather than a competition. but however non-diverting i found the skills challenge, three-point, and slam dunk contests, they were far more interesting, as they are every year, than the actual all-star game. the baseball and football ones are worse.

a couple years ago i went to phoenix for the chicago cubs’ spring training for my friend dan’s bachelor party. prior to that experience, it never would have occurred to me that watching spring training games could be not only fun—after all, getting drunk with your friends should be fun, no matter where you are—but interesting. and what made them interesting gets at why the slam-dunk contest is more interesting than the all-star game. the slam-dunk contest is an individual exhibition game, whereas the all-star game is a team exhibition game. what makes spring training enjoyable is that while it appears to be a team exhibition game, like the all-star game, it is in fact an individual competition for roster positions.

why don’t team sports, so enjoyable in a competitive environment—i follow basketball, baseball, and football’s regular seasons and playoffs—translate to an exhibition format? the harlem globetrotters are unique in “the sports world” in making team exhibition games interesting, which they accomplish by eliminating the winner/loser result as a matter of interest. both teams in the nba all-star game could win and often do, but the globetrotters always win, so that aspect of their games is uninteresting. the appeal is the globetrotters’ tricks and humor, which the all-star games lack entirely. tricks and humor: conrad geller’s “flea flicker,” katie manning’s “mardi gras and the maternal reflex,” kathleen kirk’s “swimmer’s ear,” and gary charles wilkens’ “canehill, arkansas.”

Flea-flickers are a disgrace to football
And a personal embarrassment.
They prove nothing, suborn order, mock discipline,
And make of virtue a disaster.

That would be fun both doing it
And later explaining
To an amused and unbelieving world.

CONRAD GELLER has not lived in Boston since 1964. He is a graduate of Boston Latin School, Harvard College, and UMass Fitchburg, but he has lived, taught and written since then in New York and Virginia. In spite of that long separation, he remains an unreconstructed Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots fan.

I wander down the road between afternoon parades in search of photo ops and giant corn dogs. I weave through the crowd, the chairs on ladders, the beads and bottles like booby traps on the ground. In the middle of the street, young boys play football with a purple-green-gold toy they coaxed from a float. But one of the boys breaks away from the pack. Almost my height, running full speed at me. My arms automatically cross my abdomen, a shield of flesh and bone. Tense, holding my breath, boy veers left at the last. My arms stay while I retrace my route, guard the hidden child that no one knows is here.

KATIE MANNING is a doctoral fellow in English at UL-Lafayette and Editor-in-Chief of Rougarou. Her poems have been published in New Letters, PANK, Poet Lore, So to Speak, and The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, among other journals and anthologies, and she is the 2011 winner of The Nassau Review‘s Author Award for Poetry.