World Cup 0-0
“Many goals don’t make for entertainment. Lots of goals are
evidence of the mistakes made by a wide and disorganized
defense. For Brera, the perfect score was 0-0.” – Federico Molinari
On modern earth, it’s law, you have to press
your extra stuff in plastic boxes, fill
your closets, storage units with success,
producing more, done yesterday, behind schedule,
as high-rises demand your quarterly
reports. The icon for every project
is the hand, its grip, its safe supremacy.
Which alien, then, planted this monastic
game? – this handless ritual, a liturgy
of balance, medieval patience, cross
entanglements, and then pure ecstasy,
at last, as light pierces a netted box.
This passion for denial, craze for nothing,
gives hope that we are not what we think.
***
The Art of Delay
“at the edge of defeat or victory, the arc
of suspense may be prolonged and
tension heightened.” – Dramaqueen.info
The pitcher’s pause creates a quiet pain,
a short, round knife, maybe Talon or Guthook,
pressed gently there against your breastbone,
or even more, across your spine, mid-back.
Your breathing slows. You wait for something wild.
Best stories do the same. That quiet haunt
before the battle storm. That doubting child
outside the door. Or lips that wait in want.
As innings melt or players stand on base,
that knife’s curved edge digs in a little more;
each pause restarts the narrative, each shapes
the novel as a whole, until the final score.
We hunt for wins, the closure of the ninth
but more than that we love that awful knife.
***
Douglas Jones, MFA poetry (Univ. of Idaho), MA philosophy (Univ. of Southern Cal) has published work in Antiphon, California Quarterly, Merion West, Novus Literary Arts Journal, Cathexis Northwest, Dappled Things, Amethyst Review, Phil Lit Journal, Relief Journal, Moonstone Press, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and River Oak Review.
