Listen, I
am so fast.
I am fast.
Listen, the team’s mouth moves
from across
the field: hustle. Blood-
shot, their
mouth is saying
it is out
of bounds. I have
to pay
attention. Center half-back
and their
mouths
are letting
out long lines. Blood-
shot, the
field blurs, the field it
rushes to
their mouths. If I look
& won’t
have missed it, I will have paid attention.
Many times
are lost in time
beneath the
dark red-clay. So they told & the joke goes:
he threw a
white stone in
a red sea.
The oarsman had a white stone
& he
threw it in the sea. When it comes back
to his hand
what color will it be?
Center
half-back, their mouth moves.
It is all
gums.
They know
what they are saying.
This time
out-of-bounds blood-
shot and I
didn’t pay attention.
Coach has
his playbook, it is
red-streaked.
His mouth is where
the
cardinals are leashed. It is a stone’s
throw away,
and believe me, really:
red is the
pigment of cardinals unleashing.
Center
half-back says hustle back.
I will go
back.
I will
hustle back.
They know
what they are saying.
I am fast.
I am so fast.
My legs,
they blend and kneed.
Coach’s
playbook is pouring something.
Coach’s playbook
is in his hands.
He washes
his hands off, he gets
it off.
Blood-
shot, I am
so fast, on a breakaway.
Out-of-bound,
I am so fast,
the pigment
it’s all over.
Lauren Haldeman is the author of Instead of Dying (winner of the 2017
Colorado Prize for Poetry, Center for Literary Publishing, 2017), Calenday (Rescue Press, 2014) and the
artist book The Eccentricity is Zero
(Digraph Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in Tin House, Colorado Review,
Fence, The Iowa Review and The
Rumpus. A comic book artist and poet, she has been a recipient of the
Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, the Colorado Prize for Poetry and
fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. You can find her online at http://laurenhaldeman.com
The
Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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