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.