After six fights in seven weeks during eighth grade lunch, I was summoned to the garage at dusk. My face ached with the yellow-brown of an autumn Georgia sunset, my nose swelled with the hallowed blue of my foster father’s Braves jersey, and my cheeks flushed with the glowering red of a baseball’s stitching – a ball curiously clamped in his bandsaw vise.
dangling bulb, leashed firefly
within the bear cave
a paw’s gentle crush
It was the dead ball era of our relationship. Errors charged to me: withdrawn and withholding. Errors charged to him: watching and waiting. So many lessons, but only of what, never of how or why. And the fear that if I fled again (I always did), he might stop searching (he never did). So I created art during lunch, expressionist exhibits, and returned home to proffer my painted face to Òfàfà, as his other children called him. But they were Black, like him, and I was…some mutt east of Africa?
evening conversations
overthrown relays
bouncing, lost in the dugout
What overjoyed him, I overshadowed. A football nesting on his old catcher’s mitt. Rap CDs outstacking his blues records. Sagging wannabe gangster pants overlaying his suspenders on the clothesline. The AL over the NL, but above all, the NFL. For the chronically unwanted, combat breeds identity, rejection spawns self-acceptance.
battered makeshift backstop
a leaning garage exhales
one more spring?
That evening, he was a dim shadow hunched in the corner. I started to ask what he was doing, but the bandsaw started shrieking, bearing down on the baseball. The blade bit, and the ball half-spun in the clamps, briefly flashing a black signature – not the commissioner’s. My lungs fell into the vise, my heart against the blade. It was the Maddux ball, a foul ball he’d caught with his hat, and the Professor’s last autograph on his way to the bus one sweltering night in Atlanta.
lone major league game
row 214, seat 12
a memento’s screaming vivisection
Now his knife was out, digging into the freshly shorn halves. He handed me the leather cover, a pale husk with a single bat smudge. Yeah, I get it, I muttered, ever-averse to morals, messages, and metaphors. Eventually, we all get hit, we all get scuffed up. I let it flutter like a torn dove’s wing into a crevice of old sawdust and mouse droppings. He shook his head. No. More digging, and then against my palm, he pressed one half of the ball’s core, a cork cocoon, firm and steady, responsive but immutable. I pulled away, but his eyes were twin pools of pine tar. Eventually, we all get summoned, we all get sawed. He closed my fingers around the core and slipped the other half into his pocket.
hidden helm
steadies the arc
past a watching sun
***
Kiyoshi Hirawa is a poet, writer, and former police officer who was wrongfully terminated after reporting sexual misconduct and rape committed by fellow police officers. Hirawa’s writing focuses on resiliency, hope, and providing a voice for the unheard, ignored, and overlooked. Hirawa grew up on Braves baseball and still dreams about being the fourth starter in the rotation behind Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz.
