Vol. 1, No. 2: Line Drives & Bloop Hits photo

BalkRobert Wood Lynn

Fifteen games out by June and still
I insist on watching every inning
as if to prove devotion outlives discretion.

Do us both the favor and turn
the volume off
, you say though I pretend
not to listen. Outside on Georgia Avenue,

street wet enough I can hear the reflections
through the wall, comes the sound of a car
passing—only the car never passes.

Never slows, never stops. Leaves only the sound
of going and going without receding.
How I have hung in your life, uneasy

in that strangest way: familiar. How our pitcher
on the TV, crested with the salt of defeat,
describes pretty much the worst curveball

I ever threw: knew it was out of here before
it ever left my hand
. He looks to go on, but doesn’t
say it—how could he, in front of all

these people, even just the one. I watch
him wiping his brow, as he resolves,
next time, to hold on the whole way home.