Thin Air Magazine

Skip to content
Menu
  • THIN AIR ONLINE
    • SUBMITTED WORKS
      • FICTION
      • POETRY
      • NONFICTION
    • STAFF CONTENT
    • FLAGSTAFF LITERARY EVENTS CALENDAR
  • SUBMIT
    • SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
  • ABOUT
    • MASTHEAD
    • STORE
  • Archive
Home
Search

“Joe Shlabotnik Fan Club News” by Eric Roy

  • by Thin Air Staff
  • Posted on March 12, 2021


Joe Shlabotnik Fan Club News

Spring should mean baseball or birds electrocuted
feathered asterisks of sex punctuating page after page

of manicured front lawn. Now, when mother calls
for rain breaking in the dirt, father flashes inside

and high, so naturally a fat orange fastball sets
straight down the middle of the plate-white sky.

Comfort in, not metrics, but common weaknesses.
Scar-red stitching around each our live-ball heart.

And sent down! to the Green Grass League
where we all regularly make spectacular catches

out of routine fly balls and continue batting .143.
.143—not a bad lifetime average considering

all the nasty stuff flying in and at your head.
Each morning waking up, stepping to the plate.

A knock, a walk, watching another day float by
you wish that you had back. Plunked every now

and again. That final strike. Still, once dug into
the dirt, inside the batter’s box, who has a better view?




Eric Roy’s recent poetry can be found or is forthcoming at Bennington Review, Green Mountains Review, Salamander, Salt Hill, Sugar House Review, Spillway, Third Coast, the American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. His hybrid ‘Origin Story’ has been nominated for inclusion in Best Small Fictions 2021 and can be viewed here:
https://www.ruminatemagazine.com/blogs/ruminate-blog/origin-story

Posted in SUBMITTED WORKS, THIN AIR ONLINE

Post navigation

Prev Three poems by Dante Novario
Next Four poems by Lily Kosmicki

Archives

Thin Air Magazine is a non-profit, graduate-run literary magazine published by Northern Arizona University

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • THIN AIR ONLINE
  • SUBMIT
  • ABOUT
  • Archive
Website Powered by WordPress.com.
Press Enter To Begin Your Search
×
  • Follow Following
    • Thin Air Magazine
    • Join 969 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Thin Air Magazine
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar