All The Thoughts At A Football Game
By Juan Felipe Herrera
There are baby thoughts
in the shape of seaweed & pirate knives
they float over strips of shores &
curl into a rainy parasol where
a laboring red papaya truck awaits
& there are the thoughts of Staff Sergeant
Melanie Lippman—she’s back
from Afghanistan & cheers as a
rhomboid ball burns
through the flags of space—
but she
notices distant jagged
zones on fire where the Company battles &
there are the thoughts of a father
Don Jose Emiliano in plaid
with water on his face—his only son
on the wet field
for the first time—he is a man now
how his fury tumbles &
finds a route
to launch & spin his body
toward a shifting goal—is that
my son he says.
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