Richard Katrovas

I, as sinned against as sinning, take small pleasure from the winning of our decades-long guerrilla war. For from my job I've wanted more than victory over one who'd tried to punish me before he died, and now, neither of us dead, we haunt these halls in constant dread of drifting past the other's life while long-term memory is rife with slights that sting like paper cuts. We've occupied our separate ruts yet simmered in a single rage. We've grown absurd in middle age together, and should seek wisdom now together, by ending this row. I therefore decommission you as constant flagship of my rue. Below the threshold of my hate you now my good regard may rate. For I have let my anger pass. But, while you're down there, kiss my ass.

It is snowing in southwest Michigan. Such weather is unusual so late. The trees are squirting buds that advocate For green profusions that yesterday began To grunt and poke and strain toward full-blown spring. Now fleeced, the trees are January stark. Though clocks, sprung forward, hedge against the dark, We hear the arias our miseries sing When darkness is a slave to all that white. If global warming is the fangs of doom I see its poison wafting, from this room. The future will be mottled if not bright. Perhaps I’ll die before the killing trend. I hear my children’s voices on this wind.

That I would even use the phrase suggests A false yet useful worldliness, a scope Far greater than my caste would indicate. The phrase signals, “I’ve lived abroad! I’ve watched The Premier League in European pubs!” In fact I hate the game; its ethos rests On boring strategies and rules that cope, Merely, with competition’s link to fate, How luck and skill dovetail in every botched Clear kick on goal, and every header rubs Against the grain of what is beautiful In sport, at least to my Yankee Doodle eyes. Give me smashmouth football over soccer. Give me concussions, shattered bones, ripped muscles, Strategies of season-long attrition. Give me huge men heaving their bountiful Frames against each other with such grace that size Seems incidental to the role of stalker Of fleet backs and fleeter ends, men who bustle Along the line of scrimmage on a mission. A hundred and sixty-pound defensive end, I was the scourge of JV quarterbacks. I blitzed on every down, so spent the game With most the action at my back; the coach Didn’t seem to care; he was drunk on power And vodka, said my job was to defend Right flank from sweeps and register some sacks. Helter skelter, I dreamed of gridiron fame. Much less than mediocre, I could not broach The fact of pain, the realm where bruises flower.