About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature, Tim Peeler has also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
Image Credit: John Collier Jr, “Childersburg, Alabama. Rooms for rent” (1942) Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Sturm and Drang
You start a poem the same way
My father-in-law lit the grill.
Fill a brown paper grocery bag
With a whole measure of briquettes.
Soak the bag and contents
With a liberal amount
Of lawnmower gas.
Set the bag in the middle
Of the round grill top.
From daringly close distance
Toss a lit wooden match
Onto the gas-soaked bag.
My oldest son at four
Watched the explosion
From a guarded distance:
Frightened, thrilled,
Fighting back tears.
It was the first time
He’d seen poetry.
About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature, Tim Peeler has also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
Is that an ink pen or a bullet?
I can’t tell, you know how long
Are some of those shells.
I see a teenaged boy child
Listening to “Any Major Dude”
Thinking of when to come out.
Outside the rain drums
The triple pane basement window.
Inside a half-crippled black lab
Watches a baseball game.
I ran through what seemed like
An ocean of time to get here
To find myself invisible.
The ages will be the ages
As the rat snake snugs himself
Around the water pipe in the crawlspace.
What do you mean, how will we go on?
We will wear goggles.
We will carry spears.
About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature,Tim Peelerhas also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
Image Credit: Robert Shymanski: “Attic, crawl space, view east and southeast from north center (part 1 of triptych view) – Hegeler Carus Mansion, 1307 Seventh Street, La Salle, La Salle County, IL”(2008) The Library of Congress
When a nearly 79 year old man
Dies with a .26 blood alcohol level,
The angels of the old country
Swoop down to carry him high
Above the fir trees and the hills
Over the mini-mansions
And the condo riddled ski slopes
Past the eagle nests
And caves full of wintering bears.
Having sparred with indifferent
Doctors, callous insurance providers,
Having shed abandonment
And heartlessness,
Having opted for vodka
To wrestle misdiagnosis,
Looking one more time
Across the cabin deck
Into the darkness
Where the angels
Dangled their legs
From the roof of the sky.
About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature,Tim Peelerhas also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
Through the pounding thunderstorm,
They endured blue lightning flashes,
Great drops of steaming rain,
And on the screen, the first of
A double feature, Invasion Of the Blood Farmers,
A film shot so poorly
That day and night shots
Were jumbled together;
So cheap, the actors were paid
With six packs of beer
To play blood-seeking druids
On a mission to save their queen.
They gritted their teeth
As their wipers slashed,
The speaker crackled, and
The parking lot emptied
Of all but the stoners
And the crazies awaiting
The second feature, Shriek of the Mutilated,
Wherein grad students
Undertake a field trip
To Boot Island in search of Yeti,
And the hardcores were rewarded
When the summer skies cleared
And fell silent as the hairy
Beast began his carnage.
About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature,Tim Peelerhas also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
Walker Evans (1935) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program
.
Larry
By Tim Peeler
Larry
There’s an owl-faced hillbilly boy staring at me across The Cracker Barrel dining room where I’m sat back to the fireplace, Waiting on pecan-crusted catfish, cornbread, Collards, contemporary country music with its TV accent Bursting forth like busted springs—that boy Probably thinks I’m as old as the shit hanging on wall To authenticate somehow this cattle drive of victuals, And in the old days I would have frightened him or challenged His daddy to step outside, but now I know I am just Another spectacle pinned to the walls of the living To someway make it look real.
.
About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature,Tim Peelerhas also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
Photo by Gertrude Käsebier (1905) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program
Paramnesia 2
By Tim Peeler
Paramnesia 2
The deluge of nighttime dog barks Pauses for the after storm gutter drip. There was a game, he says, can’t Remember if it was 47 or 8, but we had A two run lead in the bottom of the ninth. Crickets like a crowd roar and the faint Leaving of a train across the river gorge. You got a light. Thanks. Well they got The bases loaded, drunk as they say. The old man’s profile, a Hemingway Hillbilly with bifocals in porch light. And coach, he hollers for me to get in there To pitch to this Babe Ruth no neck left hander. A bawling cow somewhere, the Judge’s braying Donkeys, hungry in their dark pasture. So I say a little prayer ‘cause I believed back then, Hid the ball in my glove behind my back. A neighbor’s old pickup truck inching Through the front yard of his trailer. I throw it hard and outside at the knees. He swings and misses. Lights was so bad. An owl in the maple top, sounding out a Whole summer of loneliness. When he struck at the third bad pitch, that was The game, but then he come after me with his bat. A Hmong woman across the field, singing by the Lanterns in her vegetable garden. Our first baseman, Rosenbluth, stopped Him out between the bases. The hiss of traffic on the wet road, River like a belly against the old dam. We piled on him, beat the shit out of him Before his teammates got out there, must have Been 48, same year I met your mother.
–
About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature, Tim Peeler has also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature, Tim Peeler has also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
So he puts X=6 on the board, says I’m gonna show you how to figure out this problem and then starts drawing all this other number stuff; then pretty soon he’s back to X=6 at the bottom. So math is like this I think; you remember when the kids all went cruising, into the downtown, around the courthouse, you know, back before the mall. Now when they stopped at a light, they would all get out, run around the car screaming and laughing, get back in when the light turned green. They would of course be in different seats, but it would be the same damn kids in the car; that’s how math works.
.
About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature,Tim Peelerhas also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
As It Ought To Be 