I was told my father played baseball in school and “had an arm” until he started smoking at age 13 and was expelled from seventh grade for fighting he had an arm that reached across the kitchen table and backhanded us he had an arm the reached beneath our skirts and inside our pants he had an arm that extended around the bend of the hallway and into our messy rooms I always wondered if I was stronger or faster or even thinner if I could have escaped that arm these days I spend time on autumn afternoons immersed inside the batting cages oiling my mitt warming up my shoulder taking each grease tinged moment and throwing it back
Connie Post served as first Poet Laureate of Livermore, California. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Comstock Review, One, Cold Mountain Review, Slipstream, Spillway, River Styx, Spoon River Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily. Her first full-length book, Floodwater (Glass Lyre Press), won the 2014 Lyrebird Award. Her poetry awards include the Liakoura Award and the Crab Creek Poetry Award. Her newest book, Prime Meridian, was released in January 2020.
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Connie, you’re major league.