Joshua Vasquez Atlantis

Remembering the Twelfth Consultant in Poetry, 1958-59

David Pitcher

Is tennis so challenging? I've read the stories of burning Scotsmen chunking into the meat of ribcage and deltoid only to reflect later on those squirting rubies via verse, naming each drop with the care of a gardener stroking shoots from seed. Rugby is a sport, were one relieved of a cup, that could escalate into cacophony. A hockey skate sliced a forward's carotid last week. I saw a man perform a squat max once, and as he reached the coveted 90 degree angle of flank and shin, his intestines shot from his ass, spilling out of his shorts, leaving him hunched-fetal until the paramedics rolled him onto a stretcher. Tennis is ancient Pong.

Why without the net? Wouldn't a lack of rackets present a fatter hitch? When a beach player smirks, volleyball cruising over her shoulder, she's imagined a line in the sand containing her concerns. When a Red Sox shortstop rounds second he doesn't drift beyond the base-path, even when it's not striped bag-to-bag. The mind might make a net thicker than any white weave draped over clay. And if I heard the ax chanting evenly against hunks of tree beef, the dappled birds squawking in rhyme, a forest squirrel skittering across the frozen crust of snow? I might attach an eye to the metal hook, look under my city and sniff the hot dirt bubbling in iambs, or I might stick a black ballpoint in it and record writhing earthworm bodies breaking the surface.