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Retrospective:
“The Pick of Pikestaff” (current)
Items selected from The Pikestaff Forum
and The Piklestaff Review

J. W. Rivers

from The Pikestaff Review #1 (1979)

Hardball

Slow-pitch is for sissies,
you find, when you show off
your sixteen inch softball
and your friends split their seams.
The Pros play hardball:
go to Wrigley Field or Comiskey,
see if you ever see a softball.
Do you ever see softballers
on bubblegum cards?
Smoke Camels on billboards?
Shave with Gillettes?
You find after summers, years,
of slow-pitch, it ruins your eye,
arm, reflexes, and all the rest.
You think of scraped knuckles and knees,
raw shins, the bottle cap in your neck
that time you slid into second,
sun and dust in your eyes,
flung bats, popsicle stick caps,
bricks or branches for bases,
and you pack your birthday ball
into its box, thinking how
you’ve wasted eye, arm, reflexes,
summers, years, and all the rest.

© J. W. Rivers

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from The Pikestaff Forum #4 (1982)

The Sergeant with His Feet Cut Off
    (After a Story by Rafael F. Muños)

Peasants from Puebla
in white pajamas
capture my platoon,
mutilate my captain,
turn me loose after questioning.

The trail behind me
is full of puddles,
my legs taper
into sapodilla plums.

My feet hurt.
They grow,
they break out of my sandals,
they swim on the trail behind me.

They run up my legs
into my body,
they kick wildly in my chest.

© J. W. Rivers

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