Poetry Collection: Basketball becomes me
I was voted most improved on my hometown’s first official girls’ basketball team after Title IX legislation passed. I still can’t shoot or dribble very well but, instead, write about basketball, fiddling with words all day. The working title is Basketball Becomes Me and is dedicated to the Milwaukee Bucks. Here are some published poems from this collection.
First Place-winning poem
This poem won First Place in the state-wide 2024 Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Muse Contest. To see me read it at the WFOP annual conference go to: https://www.instagram.com/wisconsin_fellowship_of_poets/.
Transference
A flash of breast.
Next to my locker. I
didn’t mean to see. Creamy
bell of damp columbine.
Then quick towel
as curtain, as veil.
In the valleys where her
muscle joins bone, rivers.
Toes curl glossy still,
like pebbles,
underwater fruit
of wet sand.
I want her
so badly
for you. Locker
twenty-four.
Transference
A flash of breast.
Next to my locker. I
didn’t mean to see. Creamy
bell of damp columbine.
Then quick towel
as curtain, as veil.
In the valleys where her
muscle joins bone, rivers.
Toes curl glossy still,
like pebbles,
underwater fruit
of wet sand.
I want her
so badly
for you. Locker
twenty-four.
So proud to be included in Bramble Lit Magazine’s Winter 2024 issue. The theme for the issue is “Marvel” and this poem is about my marvel at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum exterior design. Ave is the issue’s cover art by Matthew Koller and below my poem.
A Place to Play
For Fiserv Forum
You interrupt the sky
with more sky. Voodoo
architecture of glass.
An iris of restless color:
now daybreak
now rain cloud
now sundown and lit
from within.
Your zinc canopy swells
and spills like a waterfall,
like my body
in genuflection.
A Place to Play
For Fiserv Forum
You interrupt the sky
with more sky. Voodoo
architecture of glass.
An iris of restless color:
now daybreak
now rain cloud
now sundown and lit
from within.
Your zinc canopy swells
and spills like a waterfall,
like my body
in genuflection.
"Celestial Collusion," "Optimus Prime," and "Shape Shifter" were published in Sport Literate, Autumnal Road 2023. The editor wrote to me that it was a rare "three for three" to be published!
Celestial Collusion
For Dr. Troy Flanagan, Bucks’ VP of Performance, and his team
You are Jupiter,
father of ankles
seized by wings.
You doctor basketball
demigods’ blood flesh
gravity into a collusion
of orbit, into stones
sunk, into glass
cleaned, into steel
stance. You coax
ligaments to breeze
past bone until
bruised or frayed or dis-
tended and then you --
their blood actuary,
flesh architect, defiler
of gravity -- unfurl
your god tongue
and thunder, Stop
eating Skittles.
Optimus Prime
For Suki Hobson, Head of Strength and Conditioning and the workout machine she designed which some players dubbed Optimus Prime.
In another life
you’d be steam
roller, back
hoe, crane --
your fly
wheels and pin-
ions and axles
strafing earth.
But here
you sink teeth
into men’s limbs,
your gears pull-
eys girders crank
their six hundred
fifty skeletal muscles
into steel fiber cord rope
enough to sling two
hundred fifty pounds three
and a half feet
into sky.
You collapse
man into machine.
They might
like you better
as Ferris wheel.
Shape Shifter
For Pat Connaughton, Bucks’ Guard
Son of Poseidon, you taste
of salt and sand and ocean
creatures. And whimsy.
Whatever whomever whenever
your team fancies, you be-
come.
Sometimes eel
electric, you ripple then
wave, crest and
trough. Pump fake
half spin. Hesitate.
Penetrate. Score.
Sometimes dolphin
keen, you tut click
whistle, dribble dribble
pass, then you are liquid
spine, wingless
flight, air walker.
Sometimes manta
ray, you deep idle,
shallow graze. Then
you circle orbit cinch
foes in the molten cape
of your body.
Some say this game
is science, some say
farce. Some say stone
cold cash. But I know
love, I know witchcraft
when I see it.
For Dr. Troy Flanagan, Bucks’ VP of Performance, and his team
You are Jupiter,
father of ankles
seized by wings.
You doctor basketball
demigods’ blood flesh
gravity into a collusion
of orbit, into stones
sunk, into glass
cleaned, into steel
stance. You coax
ligaments to breeze
past bone until
bruised or frayed or dis-
tended and then you --
their blood actuary,
flesh architect, defiler
of gravity -- unfurl
your god tongue
and thunder, Stop
eating Skittles.
Optimus Prime
For Suki Hobson, Head of Strength and Conditioning and the workout machine she designed which some players dubbed Optimus Prime.
In another life
you’d be steam
roller, back
hoe, crane --
your fly
wheels and pin-
ions and axles
strafing earth.
But here
you sink teeth
into men’s limbs,
your gears pull-
eys girders crank
their six hundred
fifty skeletal muscles
into steel fiber cord rope
enough to sling two
hundred fifty pounds three
and a half feet
into sky.
You collapse
man into machine.
They might
like you better
as Ferris wheel.
Shape Shifter
For Pat Connaughton, Bucks’ Guard
Son of Poseidon, you taste
of salt and sand and ocean
creatures. And whimsy.
Whatever whomever whenever
your team fancies, you be-
come.
Sometimes eel
electric, you ripple then
wave, crest and
trough. Pump fake
half spin. Hesitate.
Penetrate. Score.
Sometimes dolphin
keen, you tut click
whistle, dribble dribble
pass, then you are liquid
spine, wingless
flight, air walker.
Sometimes manta
ray, you deep idle,
shallow graze. Then
you circle orbit cinch
foes in the molten cape
of your body.
Some say this game
is science, some say
farce. Some say stone
cold cash. But I know
love, I know witchcraft
when I see it.
"Pathfinder," dedicated to Coach Mike Budenholzer, was published in Moss Piglet's July 2023 issue. What a graphic marvel!
Pathfinder
For Mike Budenholzer, Bucks’ Former Head Coach
Born of tumble-
weed cactus agave
desert, now you
groom men, prune
prickly sinews into one
team, suss the dirt
roads gravel
roads rail
roads, sea
and sky
of their your
dreams. You lord
potholes and black
ice, undertow and rip
tides, turbulence and wind
shear. You tend
sorcerers who see
without looking, fly
without wings, practice
chaos beneath tempered
glass. In other words,
you write
your name
in sand.
For Mike Budenholzer, Bucks’ Former Head Coach
Born of tumble-
weed cactus agave
desert, now you
groom men, prune
prickly sinews into one
team, suss the dirt
roads gravel
roads rail
roads, sea
and sky
of their your
dreams. You lord
potholes and black
ice, undertow and rip
tides, turbulence and wind
shear. You tend
sorcerers who see
without looking, fly
without wings, practice
chaos beneath tempered
glass. In other words,
you write
your name
in sand.
Here is the poem that won the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poetry's 2021 Triad Contest. It also is live on WFOP's homepage https://www.wfop.org/welcome:
My First Orgasm
Before we tip any vinyl albums
from their cardboard sleeves,
our dance coach demands
100 sit ups.
Basketballs tut next door.
Another coach bellows.
I cradle my skull
in my palms
and fold myself
into myself,
a gardener absorbed
in upending pots,
guiding tendrils to root,
to climb. When I’m almost
done, I feel a nudge
like a cat’s paw.
In my top-secret self.
The self I barely know.
Then a pounce
and a tussle.
Then. Petals rush
from every
thorny
nerve.
The dancer
who weights
my feet says,
My turn.
My First Orgasm
Before we tip any vinyl albums
from their cardboard sleeves,
our dance coach demands
100 sit ups.
Basketballs tut next door.
Another coach bellows.
I cradle my skull
in my palms
and fold myself
into myself,
a gardener absorbed
in upending pots,
guiding tendrils to root,
to climb. When I’m almost
done, I feel a nudge
like a cat’s paw.
In my top-secret self.
The self I barely know.
Then a pounce
and a tussle.
Then. Petals rush
from every
thorny
nerve.
The dancer
who weights
my feet says,
My turn.