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 Contents | April 2002 In This Issue (Contributors) More on poetry from The Atlantic Monthly. Also by J. T. Barbarese: Fossils (2000) |
Teaching the Slider
by J. T. Barbarese .....  Hear J. T. Barbarese read this poem (in RealAudio)[Note: There are minor differences between the edition of this poem published here and the edition read aloud by the author.] In the middle of life's road, which I notice keeps getting wider, he asks me to show him a slider. Bankrupt, filled with rage, and now caught on the phone with a merciful woman who isn't his mother, I slam the phone down, order him to the back yard, and pitch. Don't push off, separate, because it's how you separate yourself from the mound, it's all in the follow-through. I come straight over the top. They break smoothly, cleanly, as I broke them off once, like knives outlining my victims. He tries, is all legs and arms. His hands half the span of mine, sneaks untied, he's a present coming unwrapped. No, you're not coming all the way through. You need to fall through your body as if it weren't there. You need to plunge down the steps your legs and back make and then the ball will break and fall off the end of the world no matter what and after that your body can burst into flames for all I care and I come through and the ball cracks his glove, knocks it off. He picks up my hand, turns my fingers, touches my face, horrified. He says he wants me to show him again how to fall through your body and burst into flames.
What do you think? Discuss this article in Post & Riposte.
Copyright © 2002 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; April 2002; Teaching the Slider; Volume 289, No. 4; 48. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
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