Liz Dolan
Take Me Out
My father checked the stats in The Daily News, glasses askew
on his slender nose, listening to Red Barber's southern thrum,
rich with magnolias' scent and Mississippi raft lollin',
"They're tearin' up the pea patch,
the bases are F.O.B., full of Brooklyns."
I never paid much mind but there was peace in the house
those loamy summer afternoons, when you could sizzle pizza
on Bronx pavement. Mama's noiseless laundry drooped
like willow branches from our first floor line, until one day
my father's hardscrabble voice drowned out Red and Mel Allen
and even the cheers and groans for Bobby Thompson's
shot heard round the world. Was it then I sensed my father
blamed her for my brother's death? And so
the Niagara
of words: the strikes, fouls and errors cluttered my life
as though blame could be written on a forehead.
Bio
Liz Dolan's first poetry collection, They Abide,was nominated for The Robert McGovern Prize, Ashland University. Her second, A Secret of Long Life, nominated for a Pushcart, has been published by Cave Moon Press. An eight-time Pushcart nominee and winner of Best of the Web, she was a finalist for Best of the Net 2014. She won The Nassau Prize for Nonfiction, 2011 and the same prize for fiction, 2015.