On recieving Robert Earl Stewart's “The History of
Baseball” from a lover by email
Mornings you
imagine your job as carrying
contaminated
dirt out of a mine
a shovelful at
a time. The day is one white bird
you can clean
the slick off of
but so what? Dear
lover,
every time you
send me a poem
my chest
cramps. As a result
I have renamed
my two lungs Poetic Diction
and
Interpersonal Feeling. The swelling
makes me feel
worse about smoking.
I don't know
what it means to die.
Or: I know, but
I don't really know. I twigged
to the
difference reading a poem you sent me
whose theme is you
can still be surprised
by your
lover after 10 years. I
know that
but I don't really
know it.
What firework
did this poem set off
in the fog of
your morning? How did you feel?
How did Robert
Earl Stewart feel?
I'd like to
know how I feel —
and I'm
chopping at that bit obliquely
this morning,
the day leaning over me
like a child
who finds you lazing in bed
and asks you to
punish
her brother.
I'm writing this poem for you
so quickly it
is like a hostage
photographed
with today's newspaper.
And maybe
that's all I mean to point at —
the glare on a
portrait under glass.
The speaker — a
heterosexual, a father!—
is also reading
that David Berman book!
On the
nightstand over there, that very book!
You can't spark
the hot glow without the fog
and the firework. You understand, right?
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