The Under Review - Issue 3 | Winter 2021

ISSUE 3

WINTER 2021

ISSUE 3, WINTER 2021

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Terry Horstman

MANAGING EDITOR

Meghan Maloney-Vinz

DESIGN EDITOR

JP Bertram

COVER DESIGN

Patrick Sexton

TABLE OF CONTENTS

POETRY

Bless the Boxing Ring RAISA TOLCHINSKY | 8

Some Things You Can’t Understand By Punching Harder RAISA TOLCHINSKY | 9

homage to my legs SARAH BECKMANN | 20

Mother’s Running Record MAYTE CASTRO | 21

Using Your Body to Protect the Ball BILL GILLARD | 28

The Hockey Parable BILL GILLARD | 30

Tee Ball or I Am Trying To Talk About My Father’s Inability to Love a Daughter, BENNY SISSON | 39

Ode to Diana Taurasi LESLIE JOY AHENDA | 50

Floating MATT MITCHELL | 51

Two Fables About Amateur Basketball ALEX W. SHAPIRO | 58

Two Fables About Isolation Basketball on ESPN ALEX W. SHAPIRO | 59

Deked, Again GIBSON FAY-LeBLANC | 60

Skate Park—Poughkeepsie, NY MATTHEW SCHULTZ | 66

Guitar Center JALEN EUTSEY | 69

CREATIVE NONFICTION

Court of a Stolen Mixtape JUAN CARLOS REYES | 10

The Beautiful Game CASEY MULLIGAN WALSH | 23

On the Bubble JAMIE HUDALLA | 40

Greatest Moment JL SILVERMAN | 55

Swallowed by a Whale NICOLE MARIE DAVISON | 62

King of the Rock JERMAR PERRY | 67

FICTION

Leaderboard COLMAN BIGELOW | 18

Meat Grinder TIM JONES | 31

Winter Sundays TIM JONES | 34

Little League TIM JONES | 37

That Jayson Taytum Dunk On LeBron JACOB WEBER | 52

Fade Away JAKE McAULIFFE | 56

INTERVIEW

with John Brandon TERRY HORSTMAN | 43

BOOK REVIEWS

FURIA, by Yamile Saied Méndez ARI TISON | 70

NBA Jam, by Reyan Ali BRIAN OLIU | 72

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

6

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Dear Readers,

I miss the crowds. I miss the bars. I miss high-fiving. I don’t want to lose focus on the much bigger concerns

facing our society right now. Each day, COVID-19’s death toll increases. Each day, joblessness in our own

communities, and around the globe, continues to get worse. The dose of clarity we craved for what our

future might hold when this pandemic started has yet to show itself. More families will lose loved ones

before this is over. More people will lose their jobs. It’s not responsible to talk about how much I miss the

things listed above, readers, but I do miss them, and I miss them dearly.

When I think about missing these things, when I try to wrap my head around the reality that sports are

back, but we still don’t have each other. I think back to my conversation with last issue’s author interview,

Chris McCormick. Chris and I talked about a lot of things, most notably his brilliant debut novel The

Gimmicks. When it came time for us to talk about the one thing we missed the most about sports during

the pandemic, we both had the same answer. We both miss the moment.

The moment when a game that just happens to be on in the background becomes so much more than a

game that just happens to be on in the background. The moment you walk into a bar half a world away

from where you’re from, but you can already find your team on the screen above an empty stool because

the bartender remembers you from the last game you watched there. The moment when any stranger

sitting next to you can become a mortal enemy, but more likely, a new best friend, or both, it can happen,

there are no rules here.

The lonesomeness of quarantine has magnified the holes in life that the moment once filled. Whenever

I’ve been traveling on my own, or felt lonely in a new city, I would venture out into the world, seeking the

warmth and the refuge of the moment. Whether it’s finding a familiar game in an unfamiliar place, or the

sound of a loud, crisp, perfectly executed high-five, the moment has introduced me to countless friends

and experiences in my life that I would feel incomplete without. The moment’s absence this year has been

more difficult to handle than I initially anticipated and compounded with the blows of effectively losing

Sports Illustrated (the SI we know and love, at least) and the announcement that The Best American

Sports Writing Series will not continue past 2020.

Sports have been back on the air for months, in empty arenas across the land filled with piped-in crowd

noise and haunted by the ghosts of the memories we’re not making. It is this current lack of moments, lack

of communal gatherings we’re so used to having, and a further lack of places to publish work about sports,

that I believe makes writing about sports more important now than it has ever been.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 7

I don’t believe sports writing can cure a deadly disease, but as I read the work that makes up this new issue

of the Under Review, I could feel all my dark, lonely, pits of lonesomeness dug by this pandemic, fill with

comfort, humor, and all-consuming joy. I feel hope when I think about this issue. I feel whole again when I

read and relive these moments. And I think I can speak for all of us when I say this issue’s breathtaking

cover has me feeling ready to tape up and knock this whole year the fuck out.

Writing about sports can’t save us from death, but in all the small but real ways I wrote about in my letter

to open the first issue of this journal, it can remind us how to live.

Thank you to our fantastic contributors, for capturing the moment in all the brilliant ways you did and for

sharing them with us. Thank you, readers, so much for spending time with the Under Review. I can’t wait

to share a moment with you in person sometime soon.

Sincerely,

Terry Horstman

Executive Editor

the Under Review

ISSUE 3 | WINTER 2021

8

Bless the Boxing Ring

RAISA TOLCHINSKY

The crook & knot of hand, how you reached out & spun yourself

dreidel in red dust until you rose from & lifted into armor, dissipating

coin, rusted nail. Bless, this underworld of secret choir. Singing punches,

sideways limbs. The dawn you saved away every day for a year. Spin.

Your shoulders that have not left you. Yes, you can do hard things. Bless,

the hard things. Your first punch that landed. The lights in your own eyes.

So small when you twirled in flattened fields, dizzied by sky. Bless the choice

to cross your own rope: 22 square feet of skin, stadium of your blushing heart.

Bless: the iron in your body, enough to make a nail. The salt fact of you.

Your tongue, the strongest muscle you own. The flickering flame of your mouth

that would not go out.

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9

Some Things You Can’t Understand By Punching

Harder

RAISA TOLCHINSKY

I blushed like I had already been hit when she slipped that cotton baton

into my pocket between bells, though why was I ashamed our bodies emptied and refilled

without breaking a bone? I rinsed blood from my hands and Coach parted the ropes.

Make him forget what you are. We never sparred the boys—

he looked at me like the rib we had stolen to make ourselves breathe was between my eyes. then hit so

hard I heard a sound like fishing hooks in a drawstring bag

(no one really sees stars glittering above them, the dark begins at the ankles, then zips up)— he waited to

say I can’t hit a girl until I was already on the ground in my own bright circle.

What ails you, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back?

Most of the boys had seen a body bleed almost everywhere a body could

and never did I see them wince: not at the tooth wedged into the mat,

or the face shifted into a Picasso painting, or a pupil pummeled red.

Still, I’ve never seen a fight stopped quick as the moment I forgot

God returned the Red Sea only to part it again and again.

What are the rules for that?


10

Court of a Stolen Mixtape

JUAN CARLOS REYES

I don’t know how to write about Pearl Jam other than to begin with the Maxell UR 60 tape I stole from my

friend in the seventh grade. Well, “stole” might be harsh. It’s accurate, but he loaned me the tape and then I

never returned it.

The basketball court near his house was an uphill walk. His house sat halfway up that hill. My

neighborhood held a decent enough basketball court, but he never seemed to want to come to my

neighborhood. It was always me trekking to his. The only difference I saw was that my neighborhood

brimmed with more apartment buildings. His boasted more houses. The dude could have held his own on

any court, but even talking about my neighborhood felt like his nose twitched. Scent seems to affect

people differently. Even when the smells are in their own heads.

On walks up that hill for a pick-up game, I thought I might be called out for that tape. Call it fear or

insecurity, scarcity or abandonment, but anytime I felt the question looming, and the ghost of a hand

sifting through my jacket, I diverted. I asked about his pull-up jumper or crossover dribble. Flattery.

Sometimes his redirected train of thought, though, focused on the elbows I threw in the paint or the slaps I

landed when I reached for the ball. Like he knew my compliments were just jabs and he aimed to punch

back.

We had often had it out on the court. Shouting. Pointing fingers at every shot I shouldn’t have taken

because he’d been wide open. At the extra pass I shouldn’t have made because I’d been open enough and

should have shot it. Or at least should have passed it to him. The worst was the incidental contact. Even

those times he barreled into me, the burden of physicality always seemed to rest with me. Like we were

rams carving a grazing space for ourselves, and he only felt at ease with a nemesis.

We were both kids of working class immigrants. When we first met, my mother had just moved us out of a

basement studio and into a three-bedroom, third-floor apartment. In addition to the sunlight that now

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REYES 11

streamed into the living room when I came home, the move paralleled my transfer to a Catholic

elementary school. I still carried the mole-out-of-its-hole eyes that loved to wonder about the things I saw,

which was fine for a public school where noise drowned most distinctions. But the feeling rang almost like

an insult to a private school crowd that seemed to love its script of paid tuition. Even if more than a few of

us came from parents pulling two and three jobs just to send us there.

When he gave me that Pearl Jam mixtape in the seventh grade, just its appearance came with a leisure I

hadn’t quite touched before. A freedom I only later associated with craft. With creative license. With time

to devote to carving the shapes of things.

Even before listening to the music, you could touch the care. Opening the case was like smelling the pages

of a new book, and the card insert was damn near elegant. Index cards had been cut into pieces tailor

made for the case’s constituent parts. The spine. The back. The lip. The index cards’ soft blue lines

accompanied the interior track list. The unlined sides accompanied the exterior facing list. The tracks

were hand printed in blue ink, in some combination of Arial Narrow and Calibri with the occasional Book

Antiqua flourish. I used to think the kid who’d mixed the tape had invented a type font. I remember

imitating the print in my homework, in the labels I made for my baseball card albums, in the greeting cards

I wrote to my mother and my cousins. I even tried mirroring the spacing between letters and words. That

much attention paid to packaging might have revealed a controlling nature, a self-consciousness to

attention. But it also seemed to insist that presentation was crucial to content. That the sensory

impressions we get when receiving a thing affects our long-term associations with the contents of that

thing.

The kid who’d made the mix tape was my friend’s older brother’s best friend, and he’d technically leant my

friend the tape before my friend leant it to me. Thefts come in layers. This original mixer had probably

started trading in what I later learned was a robust 90s black market of Pearl Jam bootlegs. Sure, the mix

tape included studio recordings from Ten, but it also included cover songs recorded in Den Haag in 1992,

“Porch” and “Leash” performed live on New Year’s Eve later that year, and an acoustic version of “Oceans”

that I can only hope was part of the set recorded at Tower Records in 1991. That tape played on my home

stereo on weekends. It played on my Walkman when my mother walked me to baseball games. It played in

the car when she drove me to basketball practice. More than a few times, the ribbon got caught in a pinch

roller, and I had to spend over an hour pulling it out. The creases were just necessary bruises. Like welts on

my arms playing basketball and scars on my legs playing baseball. Overplaying music impresses a

constellation somewhere, if not on a material thing, then directly onto your skin.

I knew it as logic, of course, that a Walkman couldn’t tap-tap-tap on your body into perpetuity as you

walked. You didn’t have to go to school to learn things have physical limitations. But twelve year-olds will


12

always confuse stubbornness for hope, and I always needed to get somewhere, even if that somewhere

was just the path to leaving.

Whenever I left the apartment, I fastened the Walkman onto my pants. I used the clip to tighten the player

onto my pocket. I never wore belts. But the clip eventually snapped off, so I had to get inventive. I hot

glued a plastic hook onto the base near the battery slot and then I slipped a shoelace through the hook

and hung the Walkman around my neck. I was proud of myself. Until my collarbone started wearing the

brunt of overplaying the music. A rash. A map of scars and black-and-blues. A constellation I only had

myself to blame for.

But I couldn’t lie in bed or sit still listening to music. I had to move. Not like dancing-moving. Just up and

about. Stasis reminded me of how my friend’s dads would sit at their kitchen or living room windows to

smoke. Whether or not the nicotine killed them in the long term, just sitting there would hobble them in

the short. Lung cancer had nothing on a crap, rickety wooden chair. Sure, those old men were actively

trying not to kill other people second-hand. But with their elbows on the ledge, those white sweaty t-

shirts, their knees pressed into the wall, their butts trying to squeeze through the space between the

backrest and the seat—just watching the restraint gave me anxiety. And as a kid I didn’t do well knowing

there was always a doorway to walk through.

That Walkman rattled against my legs, against the books in my backpack, against the groceries on my walk

home from the supermarket. It rattled as I ran to catch the bus or biked my way through town or climbed

the stairs back to our kitchen when the summer heat became impossible to bear on concrete.

When the Walkman expired, my mother promised me another—just one more—but I couldn’t get to it

without first, painfully, trashing the first one, a scene I have often remembered like a slow motion

basketball injury on permanent replay.

I laid the Walkman on discarded orange peels and spent paper towels. The scratches on the transparent

plastic revealed the spools beneath. The scratches on the chipped plastic edges of the pause and rewind

and really all the buttons revealed a bullheaded wear and tear. All those zagging and parallel and

asymptotic scratches cutting acute angles that sometimes returned sharply to wherever stubbornness

begins. Every line chopped off and their endings like punctuation marks arranged in a growl that

dampened to a moan then into an abruptly choked lyric from the rafters of a concert hall as some guitarist

picked his way through a solo while the bassist bobbed his head to a rhythm that shook the sweat off his

pants. All those scratches like band members whose aversions to solidarity funneled into a boom that

blasted more completely because they were playing it together.

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REYES 13

Towards the end of that Walkman’s life, I held onto it while moving because the hook I’d hot glued onto the

case had, because, of course, it would have, worn off. My fingers clenched the Walkman so tightly that who

knows when my arms began swinging so minimally that they mirrored a grandfather clock’s pendulum

whose time had either learned to speed up so quickly that the seconds blended into each other or had

stopped altogether. It wasn’t until my late teens that I could even see it, and it was a college friend, in the

ways college friends like to call out other people’s faults, who told me that my elbows barely moved for

how fast I’d crossed the busy intersection at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street.

We had both just left some student club meeting. We had both just finished complaining about how, as

Latin American immigrant kids, the world always expected us to know how to dance. Like we were

supposed to be born with music grafted onto our skin. But I hated dancing merengues, and though she

could do it, what was the point. We’d reasoned that enjoying salsas and bachatas were like white kids

grooving to Sinatra. At some point, it’s your parents’ music, and it’s got nothing to do with you. What is

yours is the music you choose to repeat. The stuff that you choose to wear because you were able, even in

spirit, to buy it yourself.

After she and I had both crossed the street, she looked at me and asked why I walked so funny. Why I

didn’t like moving my arms. I looked at her thinking there was a joke coming, but she just stared at me

through the absent punch line. My subsequent impulse was to, above all things, swing my arms like an

inflatable tube man at a car dealership. “Look,” I said, “I can move them just fine.” She shook her head and

smirked. “Boy, please.” She said I looked like Frankenstein sprinting from a pitchfork just to find that he

could only wobble like a penguin. Aware enough about the necessities of the present but with almost no

self-awareness about the restraints I carried with me from the past.

I looked down at my hand. I was holding a book, light but thick, a collection of stories, my fingers clenched

around the spine and covers. About the size of a Walkman.

Where so many around me saw a hard, even unnatural restraint in Eddie Vedder’s voice, I heard a release.

I didn’t argue with anyone who repeated some version of the same bark. Why does he do that to his voice?

That can’t be good for his throat? Is that singing or just like trying to sing? I shrugged every time because it

all felt like a rendition of the same thing: Why are you listening to the music that we aren’t? And there was

no way to answer that question to anybody’s satisfaction. Not when all your neighborhood blares is Onyx

or Boyz to Men or some merengue hit that means nothing to you. How do you even explain personal taste?

Logos? Ethos? Mouthing off “Because it ain’t none of your business”?

I shrugged. “Cuz I like it.” Which was a lie. Because I loved that mixtape. In that childhood fascination for

liking something people around you don’t, it became a tree house I didn’t have to share with anyone.


14

I first heard studio recordings from Ten on that mixtape, and they intermingled with studio versions of

“Wash” and “Dirty Frank,” a live version of “State of Love and Trust,” a studio cover of “Crazy Mary,” and a

live cover of “I’ve Got a Feeling.” Listening to “Dirty Frank” felt like Eddie had wrapped himself in a blanket.

Like he’d punched a hole through the cloth so he could sing into the darkness only to muster the strength

to pull off the wool. As if muscling through the restraint was the point of his voice. “Wash” felt the same

but with a raspier range, and with the feeling that the lyrical purpose had never been about clean

progressions within or beyond particular octaves. But that every song had been written to operate in

some clef of anxiety.

And then there were the cover songs. I always figured other people’s arrangements shed the pressure to

have be so perfect with your own music. As if playing other people’s melodies and singing other people’s

lyrics didn’t carry the same intensity, that burden of proof to show people that you knew, really knew, how

to sing and play live what you’ve just written. Which is why it feels like Pearl Jam has always felt so at

home with covers. In “I’ve Got a Feeling” played live, the band seems to wear their childhood on their

sleeves. Guitars ring with auras that feel unscripted, even in the face of a conventional chord progression.

The bass and drums hold court like they’re playing handball against the backstage wall. And the vocals

turn screaming into a celebration. On the flip side of that energy there’s “Crazy Mary,” a studio recording

that wears its soft baritone like a weapon. Neither the vocals nor guitars vamp on any part of that

rendition, a patience that reflects a master lesson in restraint, especially in the face of the band’s

formative years where a hunger for contemporary relevance is always warring with a craving to sustain

this crazy ride for the long haul.

And then there was my favorite track, “Saying No” blended into a cover of Fugazi’s “Suggestion.” The live

jam session improv feels like one the band had wound its way into before. Like the type of jam session they

deployed in a studio to gauge how connected they were feeling that day, how well their minds and hearts

were prepared to receive and send musical cues to each other. The slow start tugs at you to listen. The

acceleration as the performance drives forward pulls you into a rumble, and the push to belt the whole

song out before the energy in the room fades leaves you feeling like that’s exactly how a track is supposed

to end.

But repeating the track a few times produced my very first choke. When the cassette ribbon got caught in

the Walkman, the whole machine came to a hard stop in the middle of a rewind. I had a heck of a time

finagling the tape out, and after losing an hour, I pored over a long stretch of ribbon to make sure nothing

had torn. Nothing had. But I found creases.

My friend’s bedroom walls boasted more posters of people dunking than mine. I stared at each one of

them while playing video games at his house. Shawn Kemp. Gary Payton. Scottie Pippen. I hated thinking

this way, but it almost felt like he’d called dibs on those guys. Like if I’d wanted my own posters, I had to

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REYES 15

choose other people. Except that I don’t ever remember wanting posters on my wall until I spent enough

time surrounded by his. Like I didn't know what pre-teen aesthetic conventions were until I recognized

how comfortable he seemed living into his own.

My mother and I were at the old Modell’s in our town buying me some new shirts when it occurred to me

without premeditation. I happened by a poster rack. I pulled out a few rolls. Like I couldn’t just ask for one,

I suddenly needed four. Patrick Ewing. Larry Johnson. Kevin Johnson. Alonzo Mourning. Really, though,

they could have been anyone. Barkley. Mutombo. Robinson. Drexler. Any player, that is, that wasn’t

already on my friend’s walls. When I got home, I taped my new posters above the television stand that had

long been leaning like it wanted to topple over but was trying not to let me down. And I should have

known that within that framing, the posters really didn’t fit into the architecture of the room.

White chipping paint. A window sill that rattled with passing trucks. An ill-fitting wooden door with space

to spare between it and the frame. And then there was the décor I didn’t get to choose. The gray glossy

dressers with gold trimmings. The floral black duvet cover and sheets. The cream, plaid floor covering. I

was an impostor. An adolescent miming with no attention to craft.

I look back now, and I have grace for that kid. On the one hand, covering other people’s songs can feel like

a break from the intensity of just being you. On the other, how do you ever know what clothes fit unless

you try on the clothes that don’t. What if it takes playing all kinds of covers to get to something that feels

like a recovered self. Like imitation en route to imagination. Copies until they converge into a consolidated

craft.

Imagine receiving this mixtape at this time. An adolescence imitating adolescence. It’s no wonder I held

onto that cassette in its case even when I wasn’t listening to it. The one thing that, in my neighborhood,

illustrated better than anything that I was not all about imitation. Especially in light of the fact that even

the person who gave me the tape didn’t wear the music like it left any impressions on his skin.

Almost right away in private school, I was the kid who didn’t seem so easy at a party. Internally, of course, I

wasn’t. But not because I didn’t enjoy the company or the food parents set out on tables. As with all things,

time would have caulked those cracks easily. But at that time, I couldn’t feel my way through a moment

that wasn’t urgent. A moment that didn’t have actual stakes to it. Even perception didn’t register because

it didn’t affect how I got my daily food. People’s opinions could drown in a gutter and I would never have

known that any rumors had been trying to swim. It was into this headspace that my friend’s mother, on

one of my many shuttle rides from school to home, tells me that her son had finally conceded to let me

come to his birthday party. But not without a lot of convincing, she added. And only after he grumbled

about how much it seemed I didn’t like parties.


16

Only few life moments ever feel like someone wears a toga in the cold rain. Like it’s cool if you think it’s

cool, and it’s cool if you’re trying to tell me you’re making a point, but, like, does it matter? Every day of my

life, my mother had hauled ass fighting for her life and mine to make sure we didn’t return to a basement

apartment where the winters burst holes in the heating bill. And here this kid was telling me through his

mother that I didn’t know how to party. That he felt unsettled enough by something so thoroughly without

any stakes to complain about it.

Verbal punches spun everywhere inside my head. I wanted to let them fly. But it’s one thing to sit on your

building stoop watching a street brawl. You can narrate the play-by-play. You can tell people what

everybody does or has to do to get out alive. But it’s something else to be able to process that frustration

yourself. I didn’t know how to focus my anxiety at twelve. I didn’t have the tools to name it or where it

came from. But I had music. I had a mix tape of someone who was processing a language and telling me

about all the subtleties of indecision and distrust and hard breaths that I didn’t have the wherewithal to

find between the lines yet. I had the urgency of older men to illustrate for me what it took to navigate the

emotional output of other men.

Our seventh-grade fight happened, as it should have, during basketball practice. A boiling that spilled onto

waxed hardwood floors because we were angry and stubborn and without a language to call anything by

its name.

Coach had been hollering about defense. Practice intensified when after a shot, the priority was to rush

back and play D. To get in front of somebody else. To slide your feet. To make sure nobody got around you.

We played man-to-man defense. I guarded my friend. Giver-of-the-mixtape friend. Connoisseur-ofparties

friend. He had a crossover that was hard to guard, and his catch-and-shoot game was on point.

People even liked setting hard screens for him, and so there I was. Trying to mimic his every step while not

getting swiped. And there he was. Trying to shake off all the imitation that I threw his way so he could keep

doing what he was doing without feeling encroached on.

Yes, I defended hard. And, yes, I was probably chippy. I might have slapped a wrist here and there making

stabs for the ball. But I had dribbles to interrupt and shots to prevent. And I’m not sure who ran into whom

after I tipped the ball loose, but a ball possession went from entangled to punches in under five seconds.

He caught a pass and then turned around to find me up on him. His elbows swiveled into mine. He shouted

at me to back off. I didn’t. I followed his move left until he pivoted right to shoot, but the ball came out of

his hands. He managed to get a hold of it just to throw it at my chest, and so I threw it right back at his face.

He lunged forward swinging a punch. I swung what I could, but he pulled me into a headlock. I tripped him

onto the floor where he loosened up and I could push him off, but not before he landed blows to my chest

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REYES 17

and shoulder. Teammates eventually pulled us apart. They shouted at us to stop, and he shouted at

everybody that I was impossible. That it’s just practice and what’s the point of that kind of intensity and

can’t people just chill because what’s the big deal.

Hard defense can be a comfort when it lives into an urgency you can’t live without. Hard defense can be a

sin when you want the comfort that comes with respect.

After practice, my mother picked me up in our old Pontiac. She followed me out and told me to slow down

as she dangled the keys walking to the car. I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know how to name all

the shades of anger. So I said nothing.

At home, I threw the bedroom door shut. I pulled off my shoes. I sat at the edge of the bed and dug nails

into my palms. That age-old habit to process affect when I don’t know what to else to say, even to myself. I

changed out of my sweaty clothes. I grabbed my Walkman and then shut off the light.

Fast forwarding through a tape can feel grating. But I set myself to track four. I hit stop and then hit play

and then caught the riff I wanted to hear, just not in its entirety. Rewind can also be a mission. When I hit

play again, I landed into the faint echo of an outro. Between the nightstand and desk, the Walkman drove

into white space, that empty ribbon between songs. I stood in my own soft dark space, street lights

flickering through the blinds and onto the floor. Passing traffic. The moon. The bed. The sound our closed

eyes make in silence. And then “Alone” came on. That chug-chug beginning beat into one hand, and I

tapped my chest with the other. My headphones rattled. I paced the room beating the rhythm into my feet.

Walking. Skipping. Movement comes in a language that comes with a treble and steady bass and

drumming. Like, if and when you’re moving, the music is imitating you and not the other way around.


18

Leaderboard

COLEMAN BIGELOW

Jorge’s legs pumped furiously while he imagined the possibilities of a life with Gabrielle. He saw his future

reflected in her gleaming teeth and felt the warmth radiating from her flawless brown skin. And every day

she stoked his desire with her words of encouragement. “You have no idea what you’re capable of. Just

keep pushing and focus on the output.”

As he rode alongside her over the months of the quarantine, Jorge committed to his own metamorphosis.

Now in his early thirties, with his few friends married and his family far away, Jorge contemplated his

solitude. His last relationship with Ruthie had consisted of late night texts around the theme of ‘had a bad

day, can you come over?’ Eventually Ruthie stopped texting, and Jorge discovered on Instagram that she

was sequestering with an annoyingly buff and floppy haired wall-street type.

Scrolling through her feed, he saw various posts depicting Ruthie’s new life with Peter. He stewed over the

new couple’s apparent glee as they wore matching ‘I Love NYC’ masks and ran the West Side Highway, or

cooked ‘delicious’ Vegan meals in Peter’s spacious Tribeca loft. Alone in his Spanish Harlem apartment

Jorge gorged himself on Popeye’s Fried Chicken and Buttermilk biscuits. He had always been a stocky

5’10’’ but, after breaking up with Ruthie, Jorge had reached obese status. So when his coworker

mentioned her Peloton referral discount, Jorge finally succumbed to the spin.

As they set up the bike, one of the Peloton delivery men had smiled sympathetically at Jorge and said,

“This will be great for you.” Jorge had enthusiastically replied “Looking forward to it!” before realizing he

was being insulted and then spent the rest of the afternoon studying his doughy reflection in the mirror

and feeling pathetic. When he took his first ride, he felt parts of himself hanging off the edges like an overscooped

ice cream cone. But, once Jorge found Gabrielle, he decided he would lose the weight for her.

He visualized meeting Gabrielle with his transformed body. After they had been dating for a long enough

period, Jorge thought he might even show her his before and after pictures. Still, he struggled with how he

would find her. He knew she was somewhere in the city. He recognized the familiar spires of midtown

Manhattan and one distinct golden roof hovering in the corner of her window. A quick search revealed

that this roof belonged to the New York Life building. He drew a circle around the area on a map of

Manhattan. With such a wide range of space, Jorge worried how long his search would take.

THE UNDER REVIEW

BIGELOW 19

One afternoon, during his second Gabrielle ride of the day, Jorge spotted a book on a shelf behind the

bike. Straining to read the book’s spine, he was able to make out the words Gramercy Park: Then & Now.

His adrenaline surged, and for the rest of the ride he shattered personal records. He had never received

the elusive Peloton shout-out, but Jorge knew his time would come. He didn’t need digital accolades if he

ended up with her in real life.

As restrictions eased, Jorge began to venture south on his real bike. Riding a non-stationary bike came

with different challenges. Summiting hills was harder than twisting a knob to control resistance, and riding

in traffic required frequent swerves and stops and starts. Still, so many people had left or were

sequestered that Jorge frequently chose to ride from his apartment down Park Avenue, gliding in eerie

silence past rows of brilliant red begonias. Once he reached 23rd street and had safely locked up his bike,

he followed planned perimeter walks covering a different set of blocks each day.

The more Jorge searched, the more his body shrank and his commitment grew. Each day included a warmup

ride with Gabrielle and an outside ride to Gramercy. He began to notice subtle changes in the streets

and came to recognize some of the same people. There were the postal workers, and construction crews

and the well-heeled who seemed knit to the neighborhood. The idea that some of these people could be

Gabrielle’s neighbors thrilled Jorge.

After weeks of looking, one day he spotted her emerging from a Jamba Juice. He heard her unmistakably

exultant laugh, and recognized the purple leggings she often wore. She was holding the door open and he

watched her magnificent bicep flex as she took a sip from her Styrofoam cup. A chubby man with a

receding hairline exited the store and lingered near Gabrielle. ‘Move along,’ Jorge thought. But the man

didn’t leave. He waited. And when Gabrielle caught up to the man, he threw his fat arm around her

wondrously skinny waist.

Hiding behind the murky plastic curtains of a nearby bodega, Jorge’s mind raced. Maybe this man was just

a friend. Didn’t all beautiful women have funny heavyset sidekicks? But then the man leaned over and

kissed Gabrielle. And Gabrielle kissed the man back. Jorge loitered in shock until the bodega’s owner

came to shoo him away. Cast out into the hot sunshine, he thought he saw Gabrielle glance in his direction

but then she turned and, taking the hand of the man, walked away.

Jorge’s head drooped as he made his way back to his bike. He should have said something, he thought.

Even if she wasn’t the one, she probably would have appreciated hearing about how she had inspired him.

Second-guessing himself, Jorge schlepped forward feeling disconsolate until he spotted his reflection in

the glass of a Gap storefront. The shape of his form now roughly matched the size of the mannequins

inside. The idea of being a standard size thrilled Jorge and it occurred to him that maybe he should join a

bike club when all the Covid nonsense settled down. The world would go back to normal soon and he was

ready to leave his digital reality.


20

Homage to my legs

SARAH BECKMANN

With thanks to Lucille Clifton

these legs are long legs.

they need room to

stretch out in.

they can’t cram into

small spaces. these legs

are strong legs;

they’ve never been broken.

these legs are pretty legs—

these legs move boats.

these legs know

the pain of two thousand meters.

they don’t rush. they’re

smoooth up the slide as if the tracks

were coated with butter.

they’re patient. they wait

for the boat to come

to them. and they don’t slam

the front end; they

land with the softness

of a butterfly’s beating wings..

THE UNDER REVIEW

21

Mother’s Running Record

MAYTE CASTRO

No dejes para mañana lo que puedes hacer hoy.

—my mother’s favorite saying

Mother reached the daily recommended steps often.

Many evenings, running to the ice cream truck offered the urgency of a race to be beat,

"Alert the driver, be careful, and get their attention!"

Better yet were the jogs to catch up with the paletero man.

Running through cash like no other,

Mother stretched money, change, coins, and coupons

in all sorts of ways.

To the bakery Mother ran to provide memories

of ever endearing cuddles

for the scent of fresh made bread can not be refrained.

Mother also ran to provide

all the pile of forms

requested by the U.S. government...

to be offered a scant amount of dough

divided up among the tug and pull

of her offspring.

Office Depot a pit stop along this trail

ensuring all the checkboxes were completed and signed.

The library provided a resting place from Mother's running.

A space to slow down, pick up a book, and enjoy the silence of its walls.

Mother saw new paths to run:

Community festivals, events, and seasonal meetings.


22 CASTRO

Running, Mother avoided many of Father's hurtful spurts.

Running onward, mother refocused her energy on finding new trails to run.

Running for cover in those spontaneous showers reminding

all runners to mind the clouds patterns and existence.

On the holidays mother ran to meet her siblings

and offer many a-things to send back to where she grew.

The same holidays brought on a reminder to run to the local shop

to pick-up the order of masa for many projects that were to be completed shortly.

In celebration of one's birth, Mother ran!

Ran to meet the family friend

whose cakes were always at the top of the list.

Undoubtedly, the quinceañera cake would make its appearance.

The route to the market was Mother's most urgent run.

Church sales, rain checks, clearance, and the weekly sales lead Mother

down many roads.

Her children carrying the baton of finding

the target and asking for assistance when needed.

Formula offered a redirecting halt in Mother's runs.

Hospital visits were on repeat on Mother's running schedule.

Soon school meetings is where Mother ran.

Mother's presence in the Principal's office

reassured her advocacy for education.

Denting the school to prison pipeline system.

Mother ran and ran.

Language acquisition a priority.

An innovative business woman.

Resourceful.

Recipient of the gold trophy for all the runs won!

THE UNDER REVIEW

WALSH 23

The Beautiful Game

CASEY MULLIGAN WALSH

Soccer, the most popular team sport in the world, is a fast-paced game with few breaks in the action.

There’s one simple aim: to score a goal. On some continents, it’s called football. It’s also called footy, fitba,

futbol, calcio, futebol, voetbol, le foot, foci, sakka, and bong da.

Everywhere, however, it’s called the beautiful game.

*

All summer long, I’m a study in contrast. After my son Eric’s memorial service in June, so many people

asked about the music we played that I’ve devoted myself to making mixed tapes of the many songs that

have both moved and comforted me to share with them. Home alone so much of the time, this gives me

purpose. Yet I’m also overcome with the need to do what feels right at any given moment.

Two of Eric’s close friends are performing in Into the Woods at the local theatre company and invite me to

attend. I'm vaguely aware that Sondheim's musical intertwines the paths of Grimm's fairy tale characters

as they journey deep into the darkness—and light—found only in the woods. My daughter goes with me,

and we sit in the front row on folding chairs that have been arranged along the floor in the middle of the

room. Actors move from the stage at one end to another makeshift stage at the other, often performing in

front of us. We are, essentially, in the middle of the action.

*

A soccer field, sometimes referred to as “the pitch,” has a goal centered at both ends. Within the field are

markings for the center spot, where kickoffs occur; the penalty area and spot; and the corners—without

which corner kicks would just be kicks.

Each soccer team has one goalkeeper and ten field players. The forwards’ primary job is to score goals or

create them for teammates. Midfielders are the link between the defense and the attack and are expected

to run the most in the game. In front of the goalkeeper are the defenders, whose primary duty is to stop

the opposition from scoring. The only player able to put hands on the ball is the goalkeeper, and only


24

within the penalty area. The sweeper, tasked with the job of “sweeping up” any attackers who break away

from the other defenders, is often the last line of defense against the goal.

*

Eric, never one to do anything halfway, had been in love with the game since he first stepped onto the field

at five. By his junior year the award that meant the most to him had come from his coaches: “the player

who eats, lives, and breathes soccer.” As they headed for sectionals on the bus, he'd foregone his obsession

with Sugar Ray’s “Fly” long enough to lead the team in singing 70’s anthems—"We Will Rock You” and “We

Are the Champions”—his energy and contagious joy propelling them forward to victory. No time for losers,

indeed.

As sweeper, Eric honed his skills in lofting the ball, giving it just the right amount of lift to allow the

offensive players to ground it and score. His finest moment? A 60-yard field goal, a kick that sealed the win

against his school's long-time nemesis. He sent the ball airborne, soaring just above his teammates and the

opponents, who watched with mouths agape as it dropped, with ballet-like form, gracefully into the goal.

Eric's hands in the air as it flew, they mirrored the nearly impossible shot attempted by a defender with a

rare opportunity to score. The crowd sat in stunned silence for a single, charged moment before releasing

their collective breaths and breaking into wild celebration. It was perfect.

*

The sweeper is positioned slightly behind the other defenders and is free to roam within range whenever

necessary. Those playing this position should anticipate moves by attackers and make contact to steal the

ball away from them. They must bring the ball under control, storm forward and move into the midfield

zone, then pass it to the playmakers to support attacks. Also vital: acting as an on-field coach, directing

players, since the sweeper has a good view of the entire field of play.

To do their jobs well, sweepers must close down gaps left by other defenders and anticipate slip-ups, stay

clear of the sidelines, and be confident when handling the ball. They must always have the attention of

their teammates, so they can inform them where help is needed. Above all, they must remain focused,

since split-second decisions are often required for both defensive and offensive actions.

*

The lyrics in Into the Woods, ripe with meaning in the best of times, are almost more than I can bear only

weeks after Eric’s death. On the other side of a frightening journey through a dark wood, where she

disregards her mother’s cautions and strays from the path, Little Red Riding Hood reflects on what she’s

learned. Scary may be exciting, but nice and good are not the same. There are things it’s better not to

know. She should have heeded her mother’s advice, but the wolf was so tempting. Oh how I wish Eric had

listened, I think.

THE UNDER REVIEW

WALSH 25

When the witch laments our children's refusal to take our advice and the inevitability of losing them to

bad decisions, the pain is exquisitely perfect, the words written only for my ears. I maintain my composure,

aware there are others who are watching. They see me here, Eric’s mom, and wonder how I will manage.

*

During the turn of the millennium, the back-three sweeper system (composed of two stoppers and a

sweeper) was largely replaced with systems that put more focus on the flanks and midfield, thus

minimizing the need for a traditional sweeper. Yet in recent times, the classic three-defender formation

seems to be making a comeback. The sweeper is free to get the ball in deep positions then make a forward

run to instigate a formidable attack, which benefits his strikers greatly.

*

Eric was well-suited to his role as sweeper, and his voice was commanding as he barked directions to the

players upfield of him, leading with the authority of his position. Here he was in his natural habitat, my

beautiful boy, feeling every emotion intensely, and the freckles stood out on his ruddy cheeks as he lifted

his jersey to wipe the sweat from his brow. He used everything he had to keep the ball away from his

goalie and executed sideline throw-ins, corner kicks, or penalty kicks with full force and his signature

grunt.

Things were not as positive at home. The eldest child, Eric had led the way for his younger siblings with

enthusiasm and joy. Now his bubbly personality had given way to an increasing sense of bubbling

discontent. Our family was crumbling, a hostile divorce was on the horizon, and he knew it. Sides would be

taken; we could all see it coming. The outcome was impossible to predict.

*

Some attribute a slump—a period when a player or team is not performing well or up to expectations—to

bad luck. While a player’s average performance may be quite acceptable, there may be times when

performance is spectacular, followed by a dry spell.

Others believe psychological issues are behind a slump, that there are times a player feels less motivated

or is less adept at handling clutch situations. Players may be depressed, lose confidence, and make a lot of

mistakes on the field. Slumps happen to players of all levels, even the pros.

The first step to getting over a slump is to regain confidence. Take a break. Work on your mental game.

Don’t try to change the past. Focus on having more fun when you play. Above all, don’t beat yourself up for

every mistake. Accept it and push on with a smile on your face!


26

*

It’s hard to assess what went wrong for our family, for Eric. His role in the family was changing. Everything

was in flux. We’d lost our center and our focus. None of us knew the rules. Where to position ourselves.

How to react. Whether to defend or attack.

It’s tempting to use sports metaphors here. You can’t win ‘em all. Tomorrow’s another day, another game.

Unless the season’s over.

*

The role of the sweeper in modern soccer has long been debated, with some coaches considering it a

must-have and others perceiving it to be obsolete. Reconfiguration of the players, they insist, can

eliminate the need for a sweeper.

*

It was a blue-sky June Saturday when the news came, the impossibly young police officer at the door,

telling me there’d been a crash. Eric had lost his footing in the year and a half since he stepped off the field

for the last time. I’d seen this day coming. That didn’t make it any easier. I flipped through the pages of

Eric’s yearbook a few days later, struggling to process the enormity of this loss. I expected to feel the little

stab of heartbreak that came when I saw his hopeful face in the senior picture, though I also detected the

slightest tinge of sadness in his eyes even then. My breath caught when I saw the quotes he had selected:

“Live while you live,” and, eerier still, “What is done cannot be undone.” Meaning was everywhere, it

seemed. Hiding in plain sight.

*

The beauty in the beautiful game lies in the passion of the players. It’s found in the lessons about trusting

teammates, supporting them when they are struggling, allowing them to support you. The best players

make those around them better. It’s in the artistry of working as a team—outwitting opponents, the buildup

plays, the final pass—and in the many ways in which the goal is ultimately scored.

The unpredictability of soccer only adds to its allure. Nothing is ever guaranteed, and there’s always the

possibility for the underdog to triumph. The only thing that really matters, no matter how skilled the play,

how many goals each side has made, how graceful their execution, is the score on the board at the end.

Yet even when the game is over, the beauty lives on.

*

I count by threes as the actors sing, this is how I do it. It’s oddly calming and splits my focus, which is what

I’m going for, the full weight of the words I hear too much to take on their own. I love this play, its message.

I hate it. The lyrics continue to tease me with the glorious comfort of language that says precisely the

THE UNDER REVIEW

WALSH 27

things I feel: How do you guide your children when you haven’t figured it out yourself, when they won’t

listen to you anyway? What good is being a good mother if they’re just going leave you in the end?

Is this what life is then, a series of people to love and lose? Hopes that rise and fall and ultimately only

cause pain? And how do I continue, knowing it’s an exercise in futility? These are the things that consume

me in the depths of my grief. But there’s redemption here, too. The witch sings on, about loss, about

people leaving. It’s a struggle, out there in the woods, but it’s where we learn. It’s not forever, she

reassures us. There’s always hope for the happy ever after.

And no one is alone.

I listen to the soundtrack over and over and I add it to my “Have a Good Cry” playlist. Sometimes that’s

exactly what I need these days, song after song that cuts me in two, gets straight to the broken part, and

puts me back together in a new way. Reconfigured. Almost whole. I’m getting there.

*

In soccer, where well-trained bodies execute skills with ballet-like form, then celebrate victory with

enviable abandon, it’s easy to forget the game can be violent, too. Around the world, injury and

heartbreaking loss are the price players willingly pay for those golden moments of joy on the field. If they

want to be a part of the beautiful game, they find beauty in the losses, too. They’ve learned they can’t have

one without the other.


28

Using Your Body to Protect the Ball

BILL GILLARD

Okay—now that the cosmic

game show is over and

no one kept score we

mistook the sunrise for a

god the salt air and

thunder too we're puzzlers in

the void no pieces fit

snugly so we group like

colors or patterns we're living

a mess day by day

a god who designed it

needs a salad bar of

antidepressants and a conga line

of prostitutes that'd be a

start death is the joke

and the masturbating mutant that

moans into his pillow when

he makes an old woman

slip past reason when he

grunts into his pillow as

a child dies without so

much as living one good

day in this hell hole

dropped see-saw like into

oblivion when Future steps off

and out for a smoke

one more cold stretch of

highway the wind in Death's

teeth the diseased bloody grin

THE UNDER REVIEW

GILLARD 29

of the god who makes

young people in love splatter

themselves across blacktop with

a little ice and a

thigh touch tingle at speed—

yes, but just now my daughter poked her head in the door, held out her purple soccer ball, and said,

"teach me some more" and I showed her how to protect the ball with her body, spin into the enemy,

feel him with her back, because it's not her he wants, but what she's got, all the while moving, the

ball an egg, the future, wait for him to advance a leg to one side, then hook into it, burst full speed

past him, because it is not him you want, but the net there, right there, and drag the ball with you

to the green wide open and let her rip

—so it turns out I

don't have time to finish

the poem about oblivion and

death but I was sure

I figured out how we

can live with some dignity

despite the brutality that's why

people still read poetry right?

because it's not me that

oblivion with a handful of

shirt and raking cleats wants

all of this the purple

ball the green wide open

this pen and this paper


30

The Hockey Parable

BILL GILLARD

Sean Avery follows his weakass

shot into Brodeur, snows him,

that bastard,

dives on top of him

knocks Brodeur's mask off.

Then they both get up.

Brodeur shoves him,

two hands to the chest.

Avery shoves right back

that coward.

Then Rafalski jumps Avery

rides him to the ice next to Marty.

Avery, the cheap bastard

who snowed Brodeur.

Rafalski the defenseman

who knows

there's no greater love than to

jump the goon who snowed your

goalie.

Come on, Stripes!

Let'em fight!

THE UNDER REVIEW

JONES 31

Meat Grinder

TIM JONES

By now the Meat Grinder has probably been banned, tossed on the dogpile of high school football history

as a cruel and unproductive anachronism, a relic of the better-forgotten days when “walk it off” was a

cautious, conservative concussion protocol. But this was 1983. Things weren’t as evolved.

Rotolo expected the Meat Grinder at this practice, knowing they had played poorly on Friday, with Coach

Norris especially piqued at their lack of aggression. Rotolo didn’t really mind the Meat Grinder, not being

halfway bad at the drill himself and as charmed as any other teenage boy at the prospect of mindless

violence. Ostensibly a drill to train linebackers in shedding would-be blockers, a lone man stood in a twoyard

square, the rest of the team facing in a single-file queue. At five yard increments, players rushed the

solitary figure, taking their best shots until the guy was either knocked out of the square, or survived the

entire team. Puerile male pride motivated one to stand-in as long as possible, but according to Norris no

one had ever bested the whole team. It was similar to Kill the Guy, Sharks and Minnows, or Maul Ball:

there were rules, but the real raison d'être was carefree, brotherly mayhem.

“Since you ladies refused to hit in the game,” Coach Norris growled. “You’ll hit in practice. Start the Meat

Grinder!”

Frankie Otterbein was first in the box. Frankie was a good-natured, 120 pound scrub wearing blackframed

glasses that looked like Chemistry Lab goggles. His main talent was cracking jokes, but he was also

good at appearing busy and intense in the defensive backfield, pointing with alacrity at opposing team’s

formations and scurrying around frenetically conveying meaningless, but heroic-sounding warnings like

“be ready!” Frankie’s other talent was getting his ass kicked, which he did with aplomb. The team’s

fullback, built like a wedge with squatty, tree-trunk thighs, dispatched him explosively from the box to a

chorus of laughs. Frankie joined the grind line ignominiously.

The next in line, Rotolo, took his stance in the box. He felt light, tough, as he took on the first few, meeting

the fury of their shoulders and forearms with grim resolve. His confidence grew with each clash, and as

they charged at him, he started to feel a curious impatience, a primal desire for them to come at him

faster. Churning through the line, colliding, conquering, time compressed and Rotolo’s movements came

easier, the task becoming almost laughable. Soon, the grind line was nearly emptied; the remaining few


32

rushed in ferocious desperation, smashing into Rotolo with redoubled cruelty, no one wanting to see a

record set.

Ignoring the required five-yard gap, Darrell Conley, their quarterback, took flight sooner than allowed,

hitting Rotolo hard before he could re-set, sending him stumbling out of the box. Coach Norris grinned at

Conley, then helped Rotolo up, nodding with satisfaction. “You beat thirty-six guys, Rotolo. Next time try

harder!” he chuckled, tweeting his whistle to re-start the Meat Grinder.

Rotolo retreated to the end of the line. “G’job,” Frankie Otterbein shouted.

Seething at another injustice at the hands of Darrell Conley, Rotolo bit down hard on his mouthpiece.

Since kindergarten, he had known Conley as a guy who always enjoyed great success, but never seemed to

work for it. Conley was a star where Rotolo was a foot soldier, a plodder, third Wise Man in the Nativity

play. Rotolo worked hard, but seemed only to get tepid plaudits of “good effort!” while Darrell Conley just

showed up, did a few lazy lat-twists, and made everything look easy. As a pitcher, Conley had toyed with

middling hitters like Rotolo since Little League, suckering him into awkward flails at junk down in the dirt,

always with the smug little smile that said he knew it could be no other way. It wasn’t hate he had for

Conley, or even jealousy, just low-simmering resentment. Rotolo had begun to wonder if simply filling out

the ranks, shouldering inequity, and tasting only scraps would always be his destiny.

Too slow to sprint, and without stamina for distances, Rotolo thought he had found his Track niche in the

javelin. If only briefly, Rotolo figured, attention had to turn to the infield, and with few competitors in the

arcane discipline, he would shine at something. But Darrell Conley saw the long spear one day, and

became intrigued. With no warmup, and without knowing proper technique, he hurled it five feet farther

than Rotolo’s best. One might have assumed they would become close, Conley making First Team All-

League in the event, Rotolo Third Team, but they didn’t.

Rotolo took his anger out on a few hapless teammates in the box, rotating through the grind line several

times. He was expecting Norris’s whistle to end the drill when a strident buzz went through the queue.

Darrell Conley was in the box, and had survived almost the entire team. Some began to cheer him on.

Rotolo counted ahead, realizing he would be the last one to face him. The two players ahead of him both

went soft, neither delivering a full shot, sacrificing themselves slavishly so that the quarterback could win

again.

It was the smug little smile Rotolo saw behind Conley’s facemask upon recognizing him as his last

opponent that changed things. Rotolo’s legs were light as he dug cleats into the grass, his mind clear as he

launched himself.

He heard the slap and ricochet of plastic pads crunching, then the communal gasp of his teammates, like

they had just seen a train wreck. And then, nothing.

THE UNDER REVIEW

JONES 33

“Looks like a broken bone,” Coach Norris grumbled, kneeling beside his squirming star quarterback.

The team kicked at the dirt, moving away from Rotolo, leaving him standing alone.

“This could cost us our season,” Frankie Otterbein moaned in bewilderment.

“All I wanted,” Rotolo mumbled to himself, “was the javelin.”

He remembered that he had beaten thirty-six in the Meat Grinder, and smiled.

But then, Conley had gotten thirty-seven.


34 JONES

Winter Sundays

TIM JONES

Heath secretly hated weekends. They were when he felt most alone, even abandoned, when Vanessa’s

implacable choices loomed the starkest, and his own mewling acceptance echoed in the emptiness of her

shadow. Powerful men loved Vanessa’s bright eyes and easy smile, and once charmed by her brains, they

would ask more and more of her. She never disappointed them. Heath busied himself on a pewter

December Saturday afternoon cooking, unsure when she would be home, anaesthetized by classical

music, and imagining Vanessa’s surprise. Her assignment this week was nearby, for once there would not

be a hotel. He had hoped to have her to himself tonight, and had planned a romantic dinner. But she didn’t

come home till after ten, and had already eaten “with the guys.” The cordon bleu was untouched.

He sulked as Vanessa changed into sweats and scrubbed makeup from her face. She smiled sweetly when

finally sitting with him on the couch, pressing her thigh against his, as if amends were about to be made.

“I was hoping to have a special dinner tonight, just us, spend some time together,” Heath said tentatively.

“Heath,” she sighed. “I can’t have this conversation again. Not now. I really have to focus on tomorrow.”

Vanessa folded her arms and frowned. “You know how it is. Every week it’s like my whole career is on the

line…”

The word pierced his heart, then dropped into his gut and roiled around. She had said it deliberately,

Heath thought, dangling the thing that she had and he didn’t. Vanessa quickly pulled a sheaf of papers

from her briefcase and began to study, absently twisting a strand of hair and occasionally mumbling to

herself.

Impulsively, he turned some classical music up loud. They had both been serious musicians once, at their

beginning, and the despairing, throaty mournfulness of “Adagio for Strings” was to remind Vanessa that

she had sacrificed her art for money, and that he had subjugated himself to her lucrative though artless

career. But also to annoy her.

“Heath…” she moaned, eyes darting angrily from her pages.

THE UNDER REVIEW

JONES 35

“What’s the matter?” he demanded, knowing the answer.

Vanessa gathered the papers hastily, stomping to the bedroom and slamming the door behind her.

He sat soaking in the sorrow of the strings and watching a few timid snowflakes twist themselves loose

from the black sky outside, thinking of the many times he had felt this same helplessness. Vanessa

ascended magically in a high-stakes career she stumbled into, never singing operatically again; Heath

trailed her awkwardly, a dumb, shaky grin barely masking his nascent dread of obsolescence, trying to

avoid having to mention his MFA in Musical Theory or modest success in entry-level jobs. The light

slipping from under the bedroom door seemed a spotlight on Vanessa’s priorities, and felt to him brighter

and hotter the longer it stayed lit. Finally he strode in, undressed quickly and inserted himself into the bed

where Vanessa sat studying statistics and tables, twisting a strand of silky hair, a habit he once found

endearing. Heath jerked the blanket, thrashing dramatically and taking some childish delight in the rattle

and scattering of her papers.

He heard the alarm go off at four am, heard her groan, and felt her rise. He considered getting up also,

kissing her tenderly, whispering his regret and wishing her good luck, but instead rolled into the spot

where her warmth had been, and closed his eyes.

Sunday morning the silence in the house buzzed dully, as if somewhere a bow was dragged agonizingly

across a cello’s string. The yard had filled with snow, pristine except for the gray gullies her tires had cut

when she left. The trees looked forlorn, weighed-down and smothered, spindly limbs stripped bare poking

out meekly, as if halfheartedly reminding the world they were still there.

Heath had little to do but wait in the cold house to see if she would come home, to ruminate on her beauty

and polish and success, and wonder if he still mattered to her. They were drifting. Where once their

differences made their love seem fiercer, now the chasm seemed just too wide. Who could blame the

golden girl for moving on from such a fanciful, romantic, but utterly unworkable dream?

A few minutes before one pm he turned on the television, as he did most winter Sundays, and saw her

there. Vanessa gripped a microphone in fingers capped by pink, lacquered nails, her hair buttery and

radiant, cascading over the shoulders of a crisp blazer. Her lips appeared angelic as she spoke earnestly

about a man’s groin, near-shouting over the ringing bleat of the ravenous football crowd behind her, ready

for kickoff.

“Back to you, Dan,” she said from the sidelines. In the fleeting seconds that Vanessa’s beaming face

remained onscreen, cheery smile frozen, she did the thing, flicking her slender pinkie off the microphone’s

stalk, the white crescent at the tip fluttering three times, almost imperceptibly. Their secret signal. As she

had for years, through cub reporting in hayseed towns and hard slogs in mid-markets, cable news, and now

the network, Vanessa told him that for this half-second no one, and nothing, was more important to her.


36 JONES

Maybe it’s just habit, he thought, smiling wistfully. But for at least one more Sunday, it was there.

Heath left the TV on but drifted to the kitchen. Vanessa would probably only be seen again in hurried

glimpses: agitating a tense coach at halftime with her trademark perky grace, then later clutching the

game’s sweat-soaked hero, who will assess the keys to victory as something like “we never quit” and

possibly faith in God. Heath had seen enough. Truthfully, he had never been much of a sports fan, and

always wondered how artsy Vanessa had gotten so comfortable. He let music overpower the swells of the

crowd and the sharp bark of the quarterback – strings again, but bouncy and ebullient - Vivaldi. Heath

began chopping onions. Vanessa would be home soon.

THE UNDER REVIEW

37

Little League

TIM JONES

For most, it takes a few hard collisions of sunny idealism and cold bewilderment to first see the truth, and

usually an accumulation of injustices and embarrassments before we understand how things really are.

But some can point to the exact moment when the childish bubble of inscrutable fairness is popped and

life is then seen in a grayer, meaner light. For Logan, it was that Little League umpire - the gangly boy

whose slight frame was swallowed by black padding and whose pimply cheeks and silver-wired teeth hid

behind a hard plastic mask – who first caused him to see that those we look up to and suppose infallible

really do not have obdurate powers of wisdom and cool, and that sometimes right is turned into wrong.

Sliding hard after speeding down the line from third on a sharp grounder with two outs to score the

winning run, a nine year-old Logan would quickly be taught about disappointment.

He felt his foot brush the hard, rubbery white of home plate and then, an instant after, the dull slap of

glove and ball on his back. The two things happened quickly: “bang-bang” as Coach Derek would say, but

there was no doubt of the sequence. He was safe, had scored the winning run, and the game was over.

The kid was going to be a hero, this was his moment. They would talk about it at school the next day and

for a long time afterwards. Logan’s heart tripped crazily as he gyrated his whole body, conjuring himself

up from the dirt and onto his knees, feeling at that moment his own joy swelling in cadence with the

electric anticipation of his team’s adulation. Coach Derek loved hustle, and Logan could almost feel his

coach’s thick hands gripping his shoulders and shaking him with big-man appreciation for that hustle.

Logan was a hustler, had shown hustle, and had won the game. Clutching his helmet in disbelief, Logan

turned toward his team’s dugout, ready for them to pile-on.

The catcher held the ball up forlornly, the scuffed white crescent sticking half-out of the glove’s webbing

like a scoop of ice cream he did not want. The umpire hesitated, his mouth dropping open to reveal

strands of wire pinching sallow teeth that seemed too big for his slim mouth. The teenager stared at the

plate as if it held an answer. “You’re out!” he called, the uneven timbre of his voice suggesting that it may

have been a question.

Coach Derek threw his clipboard to the ground. “You missed it ump!” Coach Derek yelled. “That cost us

the game!”


38 JONES

Parents in the stands groaned in disapproval as Logan’s teammates reversed their charge toward him and

stalked madly around the infield in all directions like stunned, crazed dervishes, grasping their own heads

as if just shot. Logan pumped his legs, seemingly trying to drive the injustice into the dirt. “No way!” he

screamed at the boy. A sick shock squeezed at the heart that pumped so fiercely, and suddenly nothing

made sense. The young umpire removed his bulky mask, held it tenderly in slender fingers. His red,

bumpy face looked scared, almost mournful.

There was a commotion around him and suddenly a strong, adult hand wrested Logan away, shoving him

down. Logan saw his father step over him, screaming at the umpire, spittle flying off his lips. Laying on his

stomach, Logan watched his father as if he were a stranger, after a while tasting the dust that his father

kicked on the boy. The umpire stood awestruck and mute, then his lip quivered and he squeezed his eyes

tight; he put the big mask back on and trudged away, shoulders slumped. Logan watched his father stalk

after him, curses pouring out, unbroken and ugly. Some of the other dads grabbed his father, pulling him

away from the boy, but their jostling only seemed to energize the man. “Let it go!” one of them yelled.

“He’s just a kid,” grunted another. “Bad calls happen,” seethed someone else’s father. “Set a better

example,” chided someone’s mother.

“Did you get that on tape?” Logan’s father screamed at a man in the bleachers who held a camcorder. “I

want that videotape! I’m taking this to the league!”

Coach Derek helped Logan up from the ground. He took off his stiff team cap and ran thick fingers

through his hair before letting out a sigh, and crouching down to meet Logan’s eyes. “I’m sorry Logan,” he

said. “I know this has got to be disappointing.”

Logan watched his teammates attack a cooler full of popsicles that one of the moms had brought, then

watched the umpire, still cased in his mask and chest protector, climb jerkily up onto a bike behind the

dugout. The boy’s cleats pumped desperately at the pedals, propelling him just beyond Logan’s father,

who stalked after him, still screaming about the blown call, and the wrongness of it all. As the boy pedaled

out of view, Logan’s focus on his father seemed to sharpen and become somehow more vivid. A clutch of

men surrounded his father, some pleading for him to calm down, some grunting admonitions through

gritted teeth to act like a man.

Logan thought a moment about what Coach Derek had said. He recognized the disappointment that

roiled in his gut; he had felt it before, but not like this. A nascent sorrow tightening at his throat and

tickling his eyes, and a gloomy resignation hardening his jaw were new sensations, and he could not quite

figure them out. Logan brushed the dirt from his knees, then nodded slowly at the coach’s words, before

walking off the field to get his father.

THE UNDER REVIEW

39

Tee Ball or I Am Trying to Talk About My Father’s

Inability to Love a Daughter,

BENNY SISSON

but there are reasons I ever deny or pull back the dresses and drapery in the closet. It is the

way your mouth moves each time you call me your son. The way that dress hem hits the thigh

right where you would squeeze it in the passenger seat of a rental car. It is that stupid way

your mouth moves. This is a love letter to a father. Not because I loved to sit in the tree stand

at five AM or be gawked at for spinning all the way around, trying to hit the ball on the tee. Not

because I love being called your son, or being your son. I like it just fine. I feel no hatred

toward being your son. It is because my father never really wanted a daughter. Said God

would only give him what he can handle. How do you get a handle on a body? What is a

daughter anyway? I am afraid I have become the kind of daughter my mother was. is. The

kind of not daughter that both threatens and draws desire. What does it look like for a

daughter when her bodies sex is teased apart? You don’t understand, I don’t care about being

your daughter. I just want to be something of yours. Anything, of yours. I realize that should

not be what I want. I still love when an older man with a golf tan squeezes my hand so hard,

he cracks knuckles. He can’t feel small here. I love when he says he’s heard about me. I love

the way his neckties contrast his teeth. I love pride.

I love you.


40 HUDALLA

On the Bubble

JAMIE HUDALLA

I don’t have the fire, Coach B tells me. I forget the score of the tennis match, I never bobby-pin my bangs

back to see the ball, I sound like a church kid reciting liturgy during group chants. She ticks each offense

off on her fingers, eyes gumball-big as she searches my face for the determination of a Wimbledoncontender.

This is high school, I tell her. Coach B puts me on the bubble. AKA above JV, below varsity, in

limbo. When applied to salvation, the if-you-ain’t-first-you-last philosophy means if you ain’t in Heaven,

you in Hell.

The bubble is a magical place that earns me the flashy letterman jacket I want, but it doesn’t expect me to

show up to team dinners and slurp spaghetti while making small talk with Patti and Linda and other tennis

moms. The bubble is also a party of one. On bus rides through cornfields and cow pastures, I prop my

knees against pleather seats with the stuffing gurgling out, plug my headphones in to muffle my

teammates’ laughter.

I am too churchgirl for the friends who smoke blunts and give blow jobs. I am too pink hair and nihilistic

grunge album for my youth group peers. Mom thinks I’m going through a phase when I meet the Hawaiian

skater-punk at Glen Park past dinnertime. She doesn’t remember the books she read me, the ones with

texture and scratch and sniff. I tell her his upper lip feels like tennis ball fuzz and he smells like Axe body

spray. I tell her I am learning.

If we beat the other school, the bus returns home smelling like Subway mayo and raisin cookies – Coach

B’s treat to us champs. If we lose, the bus smells like tennis bags that haven’t been washed in two years,

clotted with fruit-snack wrappers (used) and Carefree pads (unused, typically.) My mind is trained in

reward and punishment. I pay attention to the sermon and Grandma Betty’s breast cancer goes poof. I kiss

the skater punk and Mom threatens Dad with divorce.

I want to be Raych: sprayed orange skin, bleached white hair, an eating disorder glamorized by the way she

makes a Spandex uniform look baggy. Though she’s team captain, Raych pops in late to practice one day.

She hooks her thumbs in her sports bra, drags it up to reveal her fresh-pierced nipples. Don’t tell Coach B,

she says. It hurts to run. We stay late after practicing overhead smashes with water balloons. Drenched

and shivering, we rehearse for The Sports Show, another popularity opportunity for varsity athletes. They

offer bubble-girl a pity-invite to join the back row of the choreographed dance. The Friday of the show,

THE UNDER REVIEW

HUDALLA 41

Raych makes us ass-shake and cat-back on the gym floor to Snoop Dogg’s Drop It Like It’s Hot. Patti and

Linda and Mom watch from the bleachers, horrified. After graduation, Raych will cage dance for a club

called Honey. I’ll recognize her when I stumble onto the dancefloor, the synthesized base that makes her

body writhe vibrating in my chest.

Four years later, Snoop Dogg performs his new gospel album at my Baptist-rooted university. Alumni

threaten to withhold funds. They label his conversion a hoax. The student body debates on the destined

whereabouts of Snoop’s soul.

My theology professor quizes us on theories of Hell:

A. Predestination (the game is over before it starts)

B. Free will (the ball is in our court)

C. Salvation after death (overtime)

*

I don’t yet have the words to write D. None of the above. I circle an answer at random, just like I circled the

track when Coach B made me run laps after I forgot the score. Take notes on your opponents, she barked

from the sidelines. Remember their weaknesses. I took notes on the way Talia’s eyes looked like

butterscotch candies from the other side of the net.

When I tell my mom I don’t believe in Hell, she asks what about justice. What about the years I’ve

sacrificed married to your father. What about all those people who took the easy out, split up. I ask her: Is

their punishment your reward? I try to imagine Raych and Snoop and millions in a boiling vat with a timer

set to eternity, but I don’t have the fire for it.

In tennis scoring, zero is called love. After that, the points are arbitrary.

*

*

The origin of the phrase on the bubble is undetermined. Some trace its first use to the Indy 500 in the 70s.

A driver dropped in ranking when someone beat his time and kicked him out of qualifying. As he waited on

the cusp of making it, one journalist wrote, his bubble burst. I imagine a sweat-greased man sitting behind

his wheel, hope dropping like his speedometer at the end of a race. It would be less excruciating to finish

last.

*

When my mom and I play tennis now, we don’t keep score. We see how many hits we can get before the

net traps the ball, and out of breath after forty minutes, we head home. Dad snores to a Twins game on the

sofa and Mom cooks dinner. She lets me boil the water for the potatoes, but makes Dad mash them. He


42 HUDALLA

needs to get his anger out, she tells me. Has too much pent up from when the nuns used to hit him. I watch

the water boil in the saucepan.

What I don’t know: when baptizing became synonymous with scorching. What I do know: Bubbles go up,

not down – unless, of course, they’re dropping it like it’s hot.

*

THE UNDER REVIEW

HORSTMAN 43

Interview with John Brandon

TERRY HORSTMAN

John Brandon is the author of the short story collection,

Further Joy, and four novels, Arkansas, Citrus County, A

Million Heavens, and Ivory Shoals, which is forthcoming

from McSweeney’s. His shorter work has appeared in

Oxford American, The Believer, ESPN the Magazine, GQ,

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The New York Times

Magazine, and Grantland. He holds an undergraduate

degree from the University of Florida and an MFA from

Washington University in Saint Louis. He’s the chair of the

BFA and MFA Creative Writing Programs at Hamline

University and has recently spent time as the Grisham

Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi

and as the Tickner Writing Fellow at Gilman School in

Baltimore. His debut novel, Arkansas, was adapted as a

Hollywood film in 2020.


44

Terry Horstman grew up in Minneapolis and is the all-time lowest scoring basketball player in the history

of Minnesota high school hoops. His work has been published or forthcoming from Flagrant Magazine, The

McNeese Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, A Wolf Among Wolves, among others. He is a graduate of the MFA in

Creative Writing Program at Hamline University and the executive editor of the Under Review. He is

currently at work on his debut essay collection, which is shockingly about basketball. He lives and writes

in Northeast Minneapolis.

This interview was conducted at the Hamline University Creative Writing offices on November 30, 2020.

It has been edited for clarity and length.

Terry Horstman: A huge part of this year has been our

changed participation in and consumption of sports. We are

both big sports fans. I think you’ve had a bit more of a

successful sports cheering year than I have. Your Tampa Bay

Lightning won the Stanley Cup. The Rays won the American

League, and the Bucs signed Tom Brady, which is all pretty

exciting. What has following sports in 2020 been like for you?

John Brandon: You’re right, I mean as far as pandemic sports

fanning goes, being from Tampa has been pretty good. I’m

also a University of Florida alum and they’re playing well.

TH: And the Raptors can’t play in Canada so they’re starting

this season in Tampa as well!

JB: Yeah! It’s been a lot. I have two sons, so I’ve been

watching a lot with them. It’s nice to have Tom Brady on your

team when you don’t live there because now I can watch

them on TV. They were never on Monday Night Football or

anything before. It’s been good. I was really proud of the Rays. I want to point out that we lost. The

Dodgers were the ones celebrating at the end, but my question is what’s the bigger accomplishment?

Coming in first place with the second highest payroll? Or coming in second place with the lowest payroll?

They were so fun to watch because they already overachieved just by being in the postseason. Every time

they won was just another layer of icing on the cake. It was fun.

TH: I’m glad you brought up the University of Florida. I first met you during my first semester in the MFA

program at Hamline. We read your novel A Million Heavens and you came to our class. I was excited about

that because before I was in the program, I had read your work before, not any of your books, but your

THE UNDER REVIEW

HORSTMAN 45

college football coverage for Grantland. How did you come to find yourself writing about your favorite

sport for what was at that time one of the most popular places for sports writing on the internet?

JB: It was mostly just luck and happenstance. And you can’t do this now because of COVID, but the advice

I would give to people was just to go out. You know, go out and leave the house at night. This writer named

Brett Martin, who was a long time writer for GQ, came through Oxford, Mississippi where I was teaching.

He came through for a day or two, and all the other faculty there at the time were a little older and had

kids. We had a dinner for him and when everyone else had to go home, we stayed at the bar and kind of

became buddies. He knew I was a big college football fan and not long after that there was a meeting at

GQ about how to get a bigger imprint in the south. They offered for me to write a blog about SEC football

on the GQ website. I was like, I’m thinking about college football all day Sunday anyways, so I might as well

write this blog. I did that for a season. It was fun, and then my editor from GQ got hired onto Grantland so

he just brought me over and said “Keep doing this, only now it’s gonna be at Grantland.” So I did that for

two seasons.

TH: And then you expanded to covering national college football there.

JB: Yeah. That was interesting because I came up with this recurring gimmick. It started with the blog. I

didn’t mean to do this, but I went right into this persona of being kind of a jerk. Just kind of snide. I was

hoping it was funny too, but also trying to needle everyone a little bit. I think the first thing I wrote really

dug in on Ohio State when they were having their problems. That one got me a lot of enemies. And my

reaction to that was “Well, this is good. This is working.”

I’ve never used that tone for anything else before. It just felt right for doing that column.

TH: It’s pretty easy to get college football fans going.

JB: Maybe that’s it. It’s such an easy target, so you know, shoot at it.

TH: It is interesting you landed on that voice to write in. You and I have had this conversation a couple of

times on how difficult it can be to write sports fiction. It’s a hard thing to write. Meghan and I talked with

you about this when we started the Under Review and now three issues in, I love the fiction we’ve seen and

published, but it always gets the fewest number of submissions. None of your novels would classify as

sports novels, but many of your characters make sports references where the reader can tell sports help

define who this character is as a person. Do you channel that sports voice at all when you’re in a story?

JB: No, but it is enjoyable when you can kind of veer and glance off of sports in there. It’s so hard to think

about plot when you’re trying to make sports central. If you have lots of room to do lots of character

development, you can do something like Friday Night Lights, where it’s about football, but you have so

much room. Everybody’s got a whole story within that setting. It’s really an excuse to have a collection of


46

characters and go “oh that’s a football team.” To do a short story, it seems so hard to have sports at the

center of it, but it’s not hard for a story to take place in a world where sports are.

TH: Your novel, Arkansas being released as a motion picture was obviously another pretty exciting

development as part of this year. We’ll talk about how COVID affected the promotion and release of it, but

I know many books that get published get optioned for film rights, but the path to a book actually being

adapted for film is a road much less traveled. What was the process like for your debut novel going from

someone having the film rights to someone actually making the film?

JB: Like most books that get optioned, it’s just an individual

who has an interest in it. Clark Duke in this case. There’s the

rare circumstance when it’s a huge bestseller or Stephen King

writes something where a studio wants to make the movie

and they have the money and go around spending it. In this

kind of situation, it’s really unpredictable as to how it’s going

to go from somebody wanting to do something with it, to that

happening and it took ten years for Arkansas. Clark hustled,

and pitched, and attended meetings. The only common adage

that turned out to be true in that situation was getting

someone attached to it. You know, getting someone excited

to get studios and production companies to invest.

In our case it seemed like the main thing was getting Liam

Hemsworth to play the lead in the movie. I say our case, but I

mean I didn’t do any of that work. I just hear about it

afterwards. Once that happened it seemed like people were

willing to come in with money, producers were willing to

come in, and then you can start attaching other actors and

then it just takes on momentum.

It was still a really small budget. Basically everybody was working for what they call “scale,” which is as

cheaply as they’re allowed to by their union. I know they didn’t have many days to film. They had to go in

and get what they needed to get and then move on. It was still really tight, but it was enough to start

adding people and then word starts getting around. Even after they had Liam, though, there were still

setbacks. Other actors needed to drop out because they could only do it in a certain window of time. It

was a lot of puzzle pieces for a while there, but yeah ten years. It was kind of strange when it actually

happened. I was more happy for Clark than I was for me. He’s the one who was doing all that work all

those years.

TH: So did Clark acquire the rights to the book right when it came out?

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HORSTMAN 47

JB: Yeah it was within a year or something. There were a couple parties who were interested. It took a

couple months to figure out who to go with. It came out in 2008 and it was probably optioned later that

year or in 2009. Clark just saw it randomly in a bookstore. He’s from Arkansas and saw a book named

Arkansas while he was browsing and that’s how he came to read it and get in touch with me.

TH: You mentioned it was a very low-budget film and I read they had to shoot most of it in Alabama as

opposed to Arkansas, was that also a money thing?

JB: Yeah, it was a money thing. They wanted to do it in Arkansas and were trying to, but I guess the tax

breaks or whatever determined that it was significantly cheaper to do it in Alabama. It was mostly shot

around Mobile, Alabama, but they did some of it in Arkansas. They needed the hot springs scenes, which

they shot in Hot Springs, Arkansas. There were a couple of other things, but mostly Alabama.

TH: I watched the movie with a couple fellow Hamline MFA alumni, and one of the most exciting things

about it was it felt like each new scene brought in another A-list star in a supporting role.

JB: Yeah, I mean it’s kind of amazing. A lot of actors would get attached and then get unattached or it

wouldn’t all come together in time. For Michael Kenneth-Williams’s role, which I’m so glad they got him,

he was so great, at one point it was Lawrence Fishburne in that role. At one time, Walton Goggins, who is

in The Unicorn, was going to play Frog at one point. That was early on, though, and he couldn’t do it

because it wasn’t happening fast enough and he had to go do a HBO Show. I’m assuming that was Vice

Principals with Danny McBride.

It happened like that. Clark would say, “Oh we got so and so.” Then it would get delayed, it would get

delayed, it wasn’t happening, they’d drop and I would wait to just see what they would show up in.

TH: And of course for the role of Frog you had to settle for some guy named Vince Vaughan.

JB: Yeah, once it started rolling and getting momentum, you hear, “We got Vince Vaughan.” It’s like,

“What?! Really?!” John Malkovich, Vivica Fox, all these super famous people started jumping on.

TH: Vivica Fox was absolutely amazing as Her.

JB: I know, that little part with her in the trailer. She really stole the show.

TH: You said you were getting updates from Clark this whole time. What is the writer’s role while their

novel is being adapted for film? Were you invited to consult on it?

JB: Right at the beginning, you’re asked if you want to help with the screenplay or write the screenplay

yourself. I say no to that. Another one of my books, Citrus County, has been optioned a few times and that’s

always one of the first things that comes up and I always say no. People do it. People adapt their own stuff


48

all the time. For me, I can’t really imagine it. I’m so attached and used to the way that I wrote it and the way

that I see it. I don’t know that I’m so equipped to change it the way it needs to be changed. If somebody has

their own vision of it, then I want that to be what they go with. Besides that, I’m just not a screenwriter.

The people who are coming after your books to option them,

I’m hoping that they have their own connection to the book

and their own kind of style as a filmmaker. That’s what I want

for it. For them to take it and make it their own.

TH: Is it awkward to see your work come to life on the screen?

Is it weird to see someone else’s interpretation of your work

in that way?

JB: I think it’s a good reason to not get involved with the

writing of the screenplay. Clark, other people who option

your books, they work in that world and they understand the

practicalities of casting and all those sorts of things that I

don’t think about as a fiction writer. In that case, in Arkansas, it

seemed like most of the characters were similar to the book,

but the Kyle and Swin dynamic was tricky.

In the book, there’s no particular mention of Kyle being a

great looking guy. He’s just kind of a guy. Then you get the

handsomest man in the world to play Kyle. They had people

they were trying to get for Swin, and they could and then couldn’t. Clark kind of always wanted to do it and

I think he was ready to make the character his own and go with it.

TH: I know the premiere was scheduled to take place at South by Southwest. We were down in San

Antonio the week before that for AWP and that was right when the pandemic reached its fevered pitch

(no pun intended), and we were still there when we found out South by Southwest was getting canceled.

What was it like to have this big, monumental occasion in your career happen during COVID and all the

constant adjustments and cancellations that had to be made?

JB: It was definitely disappointing. As you mentioned, it was happening right in that time where day by day

people were realizing a little bit more that this was really going to be a big problem. I was accepting what

was going on with the movie just at the same time what was going on with the pandemic. AWP was kind of

half happening, but we were still thinking that people were being smart and cautious, but that this will still

be okay. I think South by Southwest was the first big festival to cancel. At that point it was rescheduled to

be just like a regular premiere in LA, which later got canceled. So we got let down easy. It was definitely

disappointing. It did pretty well streaming when it came out because we were all just stuck at home so at

least the streaming numbers were good.

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HORSTMAN 49

TH: You have several books out already, the first film adaptation of your work is all done and in the world

for everyone’s streaming pleasure, what are you working on now?

JB: I can say my next novel will come out with McSweeney’s in June of next year. I’ve been working on that

for the last few years, but it’s in the can now. Totally out of my hands and with McSweeney’s.

TH: They’ve done all your books, right?

JB: Yup, and I think it’s safe to say that since I’ve started there everyone but Dave Eggers has turned over,

but they always manage to get great people. It’s pretty amazing what they’ve done with that press.

TH: What’s this novel called?

JB: It’s called Ivory Shoals. It’s set right at the close of the Civil War. So the Civil War is a huge part of the

atmosphere, but it’s not a Civil War book. We’re not going into battles or anything like that. So yeah, look

for that in June.

TH: Excellent. Thank you for taking the time to chat and be a part of Issue 3 of the Under Review.

JB: Yeah thanks for having me.


50

Ode to Diana Taurasi

LESLIE JOY AHENDA

I call Michael Jordan the Diana Taurasi of basketball.

Diana Taurasi not giving a motherfuck what men say.

Even when it’s nice things.

Cause it’s never fully nice things.

When I say Diana’s name

I remember the yearsago taste of sweat

on my teammate’s tongue.

I remember leather & rubber

balled into a lifeline.

Should the WNBA lower the height of the rims from 10ft to 8ft?

“Might as well put us in skirts and back in the kitchen.”

I only listen to women speak.

Diana Taurasi and Penny Taylor were drafted

to the Phoenix Mercury in 2004. They married in 2017.

I am learning that love is nondual. No need

to set an atrophied neck against hardened fists again.

I put vanilla in my protein shakes now

& I love a girl with a basketball hoop

in her shower. She fingers me

with uncalloused hands,

hands that never learned harm.

After I cum I call her MVP.

She laughs & calls me

Most Improved & I never knew

warm water until now.

Diana is a seven-time all-star player

so I kiss my love in our old high

school gym & tell her a man

could never matter here or anywhere.

THE UNDER REVIEW

51

Floating

MATT MITCHELL

Legend has it Ken Griffey Jr. hit a home run so far it flew

beyond the brim of a stadium and destroyed

a neighboring warehouse window and even Michael Jordan

wanted Ken’s autograph

Legend has it Ken Griffey Jr.

means something different in every language

He is from Ohio but he is also from everywhere else

An entire ocean of cool pulled from chemical skies and into

the prosodies of Coltrane gospel and Skyline Chili cash register hymnal

Legend has it Ken said he could play an entire game in the rain

and walk into the clubhouse dry as wind

O Ken don’t you know only God can out-God God

Legend has it I had a swing beautiful like Ken’s

could play an entire game in the rain and float like air

my running feet quietly grazing dirt a divine inheritance I never earned

Maybe in another universe I give it all up just to want and be wanted


52 WEBER

That Jayson Tatum Dunk on LeBron

JACOB R. WEBER

My son just finished watching the same clip for the third time, and each time, he said the same thing.

“Oh, damn! Oh, shit!”

He’s fifteen. I’m not about to get on him about the cursing. His friends say far worse when they’re on

Discord together. It’s not what he’s said that concerns me, it’s what he said it about.

The clip is from last night’s Eastern Conference Finals game between the Celtics and the Cavs. Jayson

Tatum, a rookie, dunked on LeBron James about halfway through the fourth quarter. When I say dunked

on him, I mean dunked over him, or maybe dunked right through him, in humiliating fashion, especially

when it’s a rookie up against a guy who’s in the conversation for greatest of all time.

“And he punked him right after, too. Get that, bitch!”

“Duncan!” Small swear words are fine, but we draw a line at misogyny, even when the bitch he’s talking

about is a six-foot-nine man.

“Well, look at it, dad.” He holds up his phone, eating the last of his eggs with his other hand. He keeps

stabbing until the tines are full, then crams it all in his mouth.

“I saw it last night when it happened. Tatum could have gotten a technical for taunting, and then that

would have wiped those points right out. I also saw that after that dunk, LeBron and the Cavs won game

seven on the Celtics’ home court to move on to the finals. Again.”

“So what? They’re just gonna lose to the Warriors.”

He’s almost certainly right, but this seems like one of those important moments when I’ve got a chance to

use the five minutes before school and what little bit of waning influence I have to steer him in the right

direction. Tatum intentionally ran into LeBron after dunking on him, in order to add to the humiliation.

LeBron is made out of sheet metal, so he wasn’t hurt, just surprised by the little bump he felt, but Tatum

was obviously pleased with himself in the clip. And Duncan is pleased watching Tatum.

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WEBER 53

This calls for finesse. LeBron can handle finesse as well as brawn. It’s what makes him the best. I wish I

were as versatile as a father. At the adopted parents of children of color support groups, most of the other

parents talk about how important it is not to see ourselves as white saviors, thinking we rescued our kids

like they were puppies from a mill. I don’t know how anyone could think I saw myself as anyone’s savior.

Fact is, once Duncan goes to school, I’m off to a job walking dogs. I’m sort of in between better things right

now, which means Elle’s pulling most of the weight with the bills. If anything, Duncan is saving me at the

moment, because Elle is more willing to put up with my lack of a grown-up income on account of how

closely I’ve been keeping an eye on him lately. Not saying we don’t trust him; we just know these are the

years where it starts to count a lot more if something goes wrong.

Elle and I knew when we adopted our son we’d need to find black role models for him. It’s why we named

him Duncan, after Tim Duncan, the Spurs’ power forward. We knew one day he’d find out about how and

why he came to us, and we wanted him to know there are a lot of strong black men who stay with their

families. I read the other day the number is increasing, actually. There are plenty of great role models,

enough he doesn’t have to settle for weak ones. It’s why I wish he’d idolize LeBron, instead of the punk

who thinks he’s somebody because of one big dunk.

He’s hasn’t listened to me as much since he could beat me at basketball, which was about four years ago.

Not that he doesn’t listen at all, but if I come on too strong, I’ll blow it and lose whatever ability to sway

him I have.

“We all get dunked on sometimes, son. And we all dunk once in a while, too. We have good days and bad

days. But they’re all just days, and there’s another one coming right after it, just like as soon as you dunk on

someone, you’ve got to run back and play defense. That’s why I like LeBron. He’s in it for the long haul, for

the whole season, not just one play or one game.”

That was lame. I know it was. I wouldn’t have bought it when I was fifteen, and my generation had about

one-tenth the cynicism his does. For the life of me, I can’t understand why they hate LeBron James so

much. A generation before, I watched Michael Jordan kill my beloved Cavs every year, but I never hated

him. Nobody did. He was the best, and that meant you couldn’t hate him. These kids, though, are ready to

hate anything, to come up with a hot meme for why it sucks, to worry about LeBron’s hairline more than

his game. Duncan doesn’t even eat Wheaties for breakfast. He thinks the carbs will be bad for his abs. He

doesn’t want to be like Mike.

He rinses his dish off and puts it in the dishwasher. He puts his silverware in the way his mother wants him

to, tines up, although I always think it should be tines down so you don’t touch the part you eat with when

you pull them back out. His friend is driving now, and he’s waiting for Duncan outside.

“Have a good day, pops, he says,” still watching the clip as he pushes the door open with his backside. I

think he goes through doors backwards to keep his kicks from getting scuffed. He’s tall and getting taller.

It’s the end of his freshman year. He already knows he’ll play varsity next year. There are eight black boys

in his school, and three are on the basketball team. If I had my druthers, he wouldn’t be playing, wouldn’t


54 WEBER

be propping up a statistic like three-eighths of black boys in a mostly white school will make the team and

all the other assumptions in our community that get support from a statistic like that. But he’s good. I don’t

want to tell him to play, and I don’t want to tell him not to play, just like I don’t want to tell him who to look

up to, and yet I don’t want him to look up to the wrong people, either.

To be the white father of a black boy is to assume you’re screwing everything up, especially when you’ve

been walking dogs for a living since you left your job at the bank. My boss shouldn’t have said what he said

about my son and basketball and why it’s lucky he didn’t get my genes or he wouldn’t have been as good.

Maybe my boss didn’t really mean anything racial by it, was just giving me a hard time like he said. Maybe I

shouldn’t have told him to fuck himself and ended up walking dogs. At the time, it felt like I was protecting

Duncan, but now, we’re not going to be able to get him a car when he turns sixteen, and college is going to

be a lot harder, too, so how it that looking out for him?

I wish someone were keeping score of how I’m doing here. If I’m fucking this up, at least I’d know. I could

live with getting dunked on if I knew I were getting dunked on.

I hear his friend’s car pull away too fast. It’s time for me to go now, too. I start the dishwasher without

having to look to see if he put his plate and fork in the right way. He’s mindful of some things.

THE UNDER REVIEW

55

Greatest Moment

JL SILVERMAN

Dad doesn’t believe me when I say I remember. It’s over 40 years later. “Who else was there?” he asks. I

say, “Uncle Art was there. You were on my left, on the aisle. After the pass was popped up in the air you

leaned down to pick up the binoculars.” He almost laughs in surprise, “You were there.” “I think I tugged on

your sleeve,” I say. I didn’t need to finish the story. In our memories, we both see Franco Harris running

down the sideline into the endzone. The Refs arms going up. The explosion of joy, the frenzy of

disbelieving happiness from the crowd in Three Rivers Stadium. Dad and I smile at the same time. I nod to

the statue of Franco every time I go through Pittsburgh airport. I stand on the sidewalk next to the parking

lot near Heinz Field where his footprint is embedded in the exact spot he made the catch. Exuberant

memories of the Immaculate Reception flood in black and gold.


56

Fade Away

JAKE McAULIFFE

Two amateur teams battled for the national basketball championship in 1962—it was not televised. We

cleaned up, Grandad would say. He loomed at center, colossal and Greek. His team photo had to be wedged

between two communion candles atop the microwave. The jersey numbers had succumbed to sun

damage, but never their faces.

At Grandad’s, the forks were crusted with anonymous sauces. When he caught me picking at them, I got

the spoon. His kingdom of avocado-green shag carpet was smoked and mottled, the red-blooded

American vision of fance at war with the reality of upkeep. We begged for longer stays.

A union lockout tanked the 1962 professional basketball season. Stadium employees—custodians, ticket

boothers, the usual peripherals—were recruited by the League to maintain their ‘arena priority’ for the

following season. They signed pencil contracts, donned too-long jerseys, played without an audience.

Sneaker squeaks echoed around empty courts. They were ghosts on the wood.

“What about the others?” I asked him, the words bouncing off hospital linoleum in ways carpet would

never allow.

“Christ, we were some holy bunch. Miles and Jane shacked up, had three kids before he died. Saigon,

y’know. After that Jane moved to a ranch in Oregon, same one she grew up on. Clyde was already fifty-five

when we won the damn thing, you believe that? And Rich… Lost touch with Rich. I heard the big man made

it back to Samoa. He was homesick a lot, used to sing tribal songs before every game. Couldn’t hold a

note.”

That season was never acknowledged by the League. All records would fade away to phantom. Seventeen

men and women tore major ligaments, three more broke their ankles, and the medical costs fell to them.

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McAULIFFE 57

Grandad wrote to the commissioner every week demanding penance and public acknowledgement. We

littered those letters with crayon scribbles—dribbling farm animals, heifers dunking on roosters,

impossible zoology. Indignation became a family tradition.

“I’ve got paper and patience—they’ll pull their thumb out someday,” he said in June before his death. At

seventy-one he lost his teeth to his gums, but never his bite.


58

Two Fables About Amateur Basketball

ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO

Hardwood

Players line up as kids flood the risen floor like confetti. Lenses sprout in the teeth of embrace, illuminating

sweat stuck to foreheads, a tide of surface fish hiding in sunlight.

MORAL: Court stormers ride the squeeze of bodies to the rafters, facelessly grazing players passing in the

piling.

Asphalt

My torso screwing into blacktop behind a full court heave rising threatening to sail over the hoop over the

fence over the lot like a well struck baseball, hips rotating to a topple like I over swung a bat and neck

whiplashed down as every ounce of force must get rung from my adolescent body to reach the rim

MORAL: Stabilized, I watch bounces clump to a roll in the shadow of the rim and swaying chain.

THE UNDER REVIEW

59

Two Fables About Isolation Basketball on ESPN

ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO

H-O-R-S-E

From behind the hoops teetering in uncertain spring wind, held firm by sand bags leaking hourglass

steady, shooters factor air, arcade style swaying, and the goal itself to match maxed out stars past and

present concerning themselves only with a clean arc over the treetop, navigating weather or metal spokes

veining up to a gym ceiling, never both in elusion of the next character.

MORAL: Rimless naked backboards line the public courts.

The Last Dance

The scabs in Old Jordan’s venerated wake interrogated in a close up, the silhouette scrunching to focus as

the moist cheeked meme buckling like a compensating muscle, the writhing of his defense satisfying

expectations of greatness.

MORAL: Young Jordan, champion, spooning the too thin leg of a massage table pressing tears into a

basketball’s tacky dimples as a security guard drapes a white towel across his nameplate.


60

Deked, Again

GIBSON FAY-LeBLANC

Sometimes you dangle

the puck, pull it

back, and a tank-

shouldered giant

with a hooked stick

pins his eyes

like a boutonniere

on a prom lapel

and plants his gloves

in your sternum.

After the doctor

scans, poisons

and scans, and one

of many tumors

in your brain doesn’t

shrink like the others

but grows stubborn

as a crocus in snow

he cuts open

your frontal lobe.

I write your eulogy

in my head, see

myself in front

of a crowd, see

the obituary’s flat

font in the paper,

put my left hand

on your youngest’s arm.

I count you gone.

I’m not proud.

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FAY-LeBLANC 61

And you, more than

a lesson I learned

about breathing

next to a droplet

on a leaf, more than

a decoy for me,

are my blood most

like unlike me

and still you teach

as you once taught

Try to get past me

that each morning

a defenseman stands

with his stick waiting

to see how you

will try to entice him—

force, will, quickness,

simple pleas—

back into his cage.

A six-year long

game, and counting.

The defenseman waits

whether we

see him or not

and each day now

I watch how you

keep your head

on a swivel, wait

for the pass, then

find an extra gear.


62

Swallowed By A Whale

NICOLE MARIE DAVISON

July 11th, 2016 ~ Stage 16 of 21: Moirans-en-Montagne to Berne.

“It feels like we’ve been swallowed by Moby Dick!” I screamed through the ear-splitting din of the ferocious Swiss

tunnel.

I have trouble even writing about this stage much less wanting to remember it in any great detail. But the

frightening part is that I can, every miserable mile of it. Maybe I haven’t had sufficient time to recover from

both the physical and mental trauma. I wish I were kidding. This is the one ride I would never, ever repeat

for all the money or cheese in the world. We should have gone around. I wouldn’t give a pigeon fart if this

was the official route to salvation. I’d go, but not through that godforsaken tunnel or any others like it.

Forget about pushing a rock up a mountain for all eternity, hell would be an endless loop of riding through

Swiss tunnels on a bicycle. The noise alone is enough to render you senseless, from the reverberating

baffle of industrial fans churning up the petrol-thick air to engines of all taxonomic ranks and the

cacophony of a hundred sets of tires barreling across granulated tarmac. Plus the closeness of it all, cars

passing relentlessly fast and near and without even a hint of knowledge that you, in all your vulnerability,

exist in a space only inches away. From the interior of one of those vehicles, the tunnel must seem like a

temporary womb, dark and quiet and fascinating. When viewed through the eyes of an overtaxed and

nearly exhausted cyclist, it really is as bad as being swallowed alive and not knowing if you’ll make it

through, slowly digested by any number of hungry machines. Here’s how the nightmare began:

“131.5 miles to tackle today. We’re 16 stages into riding the entire route of the Tour de France

and while we’ve somehow made it over the Pyrenees, we still have the Alps ahead of us. Nevertheless, the

day started out just fine. My legs felt surprisingly fresh and my mind clear from a strong cup of coffee and

light breakfast. Last night’s dinner was delicious (despite the cruel rumors of horsemeat in the stew) and

the pastoral view from the cramped hotel was quite soothing to these road worn eyes. I enjoyed a

dreamless sleep with cool alpine air creeping in through an open window.”

“The sheer length of today's stage forced us to ride in small, efficient pacelines. We fell in with a

good group of men save one, whose wheel had grown weary and unsteady over the last few challenging

stages. He was shunned like a scourge, left to pedal alone with only grazing cows for company. The

morning roads were gentle and winding and luckily for us all, the first few climbs weren’t too taxing. The

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DAVISON 63

lush, golden pastureland flush with wheat and barley, straw bales sitting fine in the fields under a gentle

morning sun. Yet these were the calm moments before the proverbial storm.”

“We were warned that the weather would foul towards evening but as soon as the noon bells

chimed in the church steeple, the drops began to fall, just as we hit the foot of the first serious climb. Fine

as I felt now, I was totally and unforgivably ill prepared for the changing conditions at the summit. No rain

jacket stuffed responsibly in my center pocket and nary a thought spent towards how I’d keep warm. A

simple jersey and thin windbreaker seemed to suffice when I departed this morning, and why not, when

the expected high was in the 80’s. I’ve never been one for divining the weather, sometimes even denying

the possibility of a storm while watching the sky turn a menacing bruise-blue. So it was with great

confidence I set out in my best summer kit for a nice ride in the mountains.”

Then it began to rain and something deliriously unpleasant occurred. I got December-cold in late July,

which went ignored and ignored until hypothermia set in. And that is the pits. Especially when you don’t

know it’s happening. It’s like pulling a prank on yourself. There’s cold. Then there’s this kind of cold. And it

can frustratingly happen when the temperatures might be considered “pleasant” to a person warm and

dry and wearing appropriate clothing and not participating in the uniquely strenuous activity of climbing

the Swiss Alps. Pedaling for hours through the driving rain, in the mountains, temperatures in the low-50’s

with only a croissant in my belly made me fairly easy prey for this intangible predator. First came a slight

chill and a rash of bumps like the naked skin of a domesticated waterfowl. That was my brain hinting to its

exposed pale shell that things were feeling frigid in the control room. By the bye, I began to shiver in

unannounced waves. Unabated, the spasms caused my jaw to clench and my teeth to crash helplessly into

each other until finally my body started to lurch like a possessed sock puppet. My core temperature began

to drop below the copacetic gradient required for error-free functionality. Some biological back-up

generator, in a Hail Mary play for survival, sent a dwindling supply of heated blood to my heart though not

limbs, which started to tingle and go numb. That made it particularly tricky to hold on to the levers:

“It turns out that hypothermia can strike even when the temps are mild...any time your core

temperature falls...you are done for. Teeth chattering, limbs numb and useless. Brain ceased to think lucid

thoughts, operating in safe-mode only. Very, very unpleasant. Though that didn’t seem to stop it from

sending the signal to my poor body that it was experiencing a terrifying, and potentially life-threatening

event and it should start to panic. And after the summit, we descended the icicle mountain and the

nightmare really began. Ahead was the tunnel. Its huge, hungry mouth was gaping wide and we were all

but helpless to avoid being swallowed by this concrete whale. Oh it’s nothing, just a never-ending shaft to

hell, I morbidly joked with my subconscious self. A huge cavern bored into the granite, pitched endlessly

downward, deafening noise radiating from every direction. The fans churned stale air and exhaust fumes

right into our faces. Not a speck of light anywhere, except the failing red glow from our tiny tail lights and

the bioluminescent fear from the whites of my eyes . It was as much sensory depriving as overwhelming

and was the last place on earth I’d ever want to find myself on a bicycle. Trucks and cars were speeding

past, just as startled at our presence as we were to be present. I suddenly realized I couldn’t feel my

fingers. Was I holding the brakes or just my breath?”

Somehow I managed to maintain my composure and keep pedaling. I convinced myself I was just being

delicate. At least in the tunnel it wasn’t raining. No one else seemed phased in the least by the cold or

screeching metal. “I mean look at them, they’re not complaining, just mindlessly advancing like two-


64

wheeled ants into this four-lane shaft to the netherworld.” And just like that, a heavy fog settled upon the

folds of my brain and I began having the most irrational thoughts of long-ago sunburns. I had surely

reached the bottom of my despair because despite the lack of feeling in fingers or toes or arms or legs, I

just wanted to lay down right there and take a nap. But some faint but rational part of me also knew that

was perhaps a singularly stupid thought because my partner was staring at me like I’d lost my mind and at

once began cooing softly to me like he would a fragile, frightened bird. And in a fraction of a short-lived

second, a static-filled synapse in my faltering mind sent a panicked S.O.S. before everything turned a

blurry grey: You better fix this and fast, you sopping wet idiot.

“I’m still not sure how no one was obliterated into a thousand pieces by a speeding box van. My

partner had the gumption to usher us both onto the tiny pedestrian platform when it suddenly appeared

like a savoir island in a deadly sea; a sliver of an elevated sidewalk barely out of harm’s way. When a lorry

passed in the right lane, we both had to lean hard against the tunnel wall to stay away from its pile driving

side mirror. By that point I was a frozen bag of limbs and was now panicked and agitated. I thought the

terror of that underground turnpike would never end. With the roaring noise and putrid wetness, I had a

sense of what poor plankton must experience as they slipped down the gullet of the ocean’s great

mammals (if they are capable of such dire thoughts).”

“As soon as I saw the light at the end of the quite tangible tunnel, my partner tapped his hip in a

well-known signal, “follow me and don’t ask any questions”. I couldn’t move my lips if I tried. We began a

lengthy descent into a faraway village, a huge right-hand canyon visible through the rain and the trees. I

was in real trouble, suspended in the throes of almost total corporeal failure due to the elements and my

ineptitude. Fortunately, there was a steady wheel at my helm and I had enough experience in the saddle

to keep upright and pedaling. A few miles up the road, the rain came down in a wave and my partner was

forced to stop. He bought me some espressos from a gas station.”

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the option to go on, such was the deluge careening from the heavens. Safe

havens were slim along this stretch of soggy road. We deviated from the route and took shelter beneath a

diminutive overhang attached to a sparsely stocked petrol station. At least they had a Nespresso machine

and we put that overworked contraption through her paces with two café crèmes and two espressos.

Each. I think that even managed to impress the listless, nose-pierced barista. She lifted half an eyebrow

from behind her cigarette-stocked counter. God you Americans drink a lot of coffee. At least I imagined

that’s what she might have said. What I didn’t know then that I’ve now been told (though still only halfheartedly

believe) is that this may have worsened the effects of exposure. Perhaps, but those tiny

porcelain vessels of the devil’s bitter invention were my only tether to the here and now. I drank them as if

my life depended on each drop, slowly and deliberately. My heart began to beat a normal rhythm. We sat

at a folding table intended for employee smoke breaks, beneath a dripping awning on the right side of the

building. We had the good manners to stay outdoors, instead of leaving a wide wet puddle on their

spotless tile floor. The air-conditioned interior was too painful to endure.

Spirits lifted, if only temporarily and falsely by the injection of caffeine, it was time to hit the road. The

storm lessened ever so slightly but we weren’t getting any warmer or drier lingering there. We remounted

and began to pedal, if not more stiffly than before. The first few miles were misery. I braced myself as best

I could for the cold pelt of rain and the spray of road grime and pouted my most determined pout, as if the

universe would somehow grant my selfish silent wish for sunshine. Perhaps it was not my wish but the

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DAVISON 65

power of a million wishes that caused the rain to end and the sun to finally break through the heavy layers

of sooty Swiss sky. And just in the nick of time too before I drifted away again towards hysteria.

“Despite today’s ills, I can safely say I no longer fear distance or climbing. I only fear the weather

and my own stupidity. Next time it rains dummy, better pack a jacket.”


66

Skate Park––Poughkeepsie, NY

MATTHEW SCHULTZ

At first, there was nothing

here. At least, that’s what we say

about a place before the building begins.

A wild expanse of riverbank, dense

with deciduous trees and waterfowl––

it had potential. A curving quarter pipe

and the slope of steel coping blend into

Shawangunk peaks just beyond

the churning waters of the Hudson.

Atop the small summit, as if climbing

were the hardest part (the scrambling, the hoisting,

the adhesion), I peer into the callous valley

before taking the plunge, full tilt.

Arms outstretched like gull wings catching

at the wind while feet dance upon the plank

of wood above spinning silicon circles

cruising below the frostline of

peeled stickers and faded graffiti.

THE UNDER REVIEW

67

King of the Rock

JERMAR PERRY

After practice, the twelve-man Catholic Youth Organization team huddled around the coach for an

announcement. I prepared to hear the news about the next game and what time we would have to arrive.

Instead, we were given news that, for me, would be devastating: there would be a father and son game the

following Thursday. I looked on as my mostly white, Irish-Catholic teammates beet-red sweaty faces were

full of glee and excitement. I put my grey sweatpants on over my basketball shorts, like my mother had

previously demanded. I asked Johnson, a tall lanky copper-colored 6th grader who was the same age as

me but was a year behind my grade who he was bringing. He said casually that he probably wouldn’t be

coming. During this era of the South Philly neighborhood that I was raised in, we had lost our fathers to a

bevy of things: crack cocaine, gun violence, other families. Then there were some dads who just lived a few

blocks from where you did, like I would later find out about my own father.

I was never sure what happened to my biological dad at that point and had just reached the age of

questioning his whereabouts. I exited the dimly lit gym which, somehow, architecturally resembled a

dilapidated castle built out of grayish colored bricks. As I folded my skinny frame into my mother’s blue

Ford escort, she noticed my demeanor and asked me why I seemed so down. I gave her the news. After the

words fell out of my mouth in a monotone preteen one-sentence mumble, I could see the wheels turning in

her head to determine who we’d be asking to play in this game: What about your grandfather? He had

recently just shown up to one of my games and cursed out my basketball coach for not giving me playing

time. In addition to probably being banned, he was old and usually intoxicated by the time any of my

games began. What about your uncle Mack? He really wasn’t the type to fraternize with other people and

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen him play basketball which was keenly important if I was going to be forced to

select a person, plus he was not only short in height but short tempered. What about me? I looked on

unamused. Oh, I know! My mother said Let’s ask Woodrow. Woodrow, I said with a scrunched-up face,

repeating what she just said. Yeah,Woodrow, she said. Woodrow Naismith was my aunt’s brother-in-law.

He had the biggest crush on my mom and would flirt with her whenever given the chance. The other thing

about Woodrow was he was addicted to crack cocaine which he would smoke conjointly with weed in

cigars.

The Naismith family had lived on every street in the projects they were from. My aunt was married to the

one who had become the most successful, mostly because she supported him as he pursued a job as a local

police officer. Another Naismith brother was a big-time drug dealer in their neighborhood and then there

were a bunch of sisters who, by that time, had children all close in age. My family’s favorite, though, was

their mother, a gruff yet sweet reddish-brown woman who always spoke with a cigarette in her mouth and

a can of Budweiser in her hand.


68 PERRY

Woodrow was in his late twenties, toothless yet loved to smile and spoke in a nasally high-pitched voice. I

told my mother that it wouldn’t be a big deal if I didn’t go. However, my mother wasn’t one to take no for

an answer and called Woodrow anyway.

As she picked up the white cordless phone, I could hear Woodrow’s shrieking voice on the other end

gleaming with excitement to impress my mother. Of Course Renee! Come pick me up next Thursday. I

went to my room thinking about how embarrassing this would be and spent the next five days dreading

the moment that would come.

I worried about what it would look like to bring somebody that wasn’t my father, somebody that may have

looked like they were addicted to crack in the height of the epidemic. In hindsight most of their fathers

were probably functioning alcoholics and equally toothless, but that is the burden of double standards of

blackness and addiction.

The day of the game, I did what most kids do when they don’t want to do something: I tried to play sick. My

mother wasn’t having it. Go put on your sweatshirt and sweatpants before you really catch a cold trying to

be like them white boys. I put on my blue and yellow number 4 jersey over my nearly bald head which was

all in honor of the Fab 5 Michigan team and the rap group Onyx and hopped in my mom’s Ford Escort to

pick up Woodrow.

Woodrow got in the car, excited and ready to play. He was dressed in what was probably his cleanest

white tank top and cut off blue jeans shorts. Once we entered the rec it was time to play two on two

versus our first opponent. Jackie Sullivan and his father were no match for Woodrow, who did most of the

heavy lifting. Woodrow dribbled the rock, he pushed the rock, he shot the rock, he stole the rock and

probably just got finished smoking the rock. That night, we defeated 40-year-old plumbers, electricians,

factory workers and other working-class white men who had jobs not afforded to men like Woodrow.

Woodrow wasn’t just playing a game with a kid whose mother he had a crush on. Woodrow was playing

against oppression and the forces that kept him and his family living in the projects for years while these

fathers lived in the same neighborhood with similar educational backgrounds but were able to live their

working and low class lives.

Woodrow and I ended up winning the tournament.He bragged in the faces of the men who we just beat by

doing a little wiggle dance with his shoulders from left to right and looking each man in the face something

that would have gotten a black man killed a generation before this one. As he hoisted the trophy, a white

paper towel fell from his front pocket of his shorts. He would scoop up the object from the gym floor

before anyone could notice.

I decided to let Woodrow keep the trophy because it seemed to mean a lot more to him than it would

mean to me. As years passed, I would see Woodrow riding his bike looking worse off than ever as he fell

deeper into his addiction. Then one day we got news that Woodrow got stabbed and bled to death on his

steps over a stolen cellphone. His brother who was now my aunt's ex husband had dropped off a surprise

for me over my grandmothers house shortly after his funeral. It was the trophy which we had won all

those years ago still in mint condition.

Even as a crack fiend

You still was a black king!

THE UNDER REVIEW

69

Guitar Center

JALEN EUTSEY

Two black boys in sport goggles

and highlighter green gym shorts

play the display piano and talk

about a third, unknown boy’s game—

tight handle and mean crossover,

his shot is melted butter over filet

mignon; his finishing needs work

but he is young and growing. No top

can be placed over his boiling bowl

of sauce. All smelly, garlicky sauce.

So much sauce.


70

Book Review

ARI TISON

FURIA

Yamile Saied Méndez

Algonquin Young Readers, 2020

ISBN-10 : 1616209917

From the electric orange cover, to the #NiUnaMenos protest with green handkerchiefs, to the cleats

hitting the grass, Yamile Saied Méndez gives us the story of Camille Hassan of Rosario, Argentina an

intense player of energy, understood strength, and the humble and sturdy eye of a midfield futbolera.

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TISON 71

Camille’s team has crowned her LA FURIA for her ferocity and fire that’s taking her team to the finals

where US scouts come with college scholarships and a shot at going pro. The biggest dream of Camille

Hassan. But at home, Camille places on her “obedient daughter” costume while hiding her hopes from her

traditional parents to play soccer as a career. A possibility that Camille already knows her parents will

deny.

Méndez gives place to Camille’s complex and fully Latinx ancestry. On page one, we given a genealogy

showing us Camille’s Russian great-grandmother, Palestinian grandfather, and an Andalusian

grandmother. Early on, we see Camille giving water offerings to La Difunta, a legendary figure who,

according to folklore, was a mother who died on a long trip to see her sick husband. Her child along with

her, however, stayed alive sustained miraculously by her mother’s breast.

The iconography itself feels resonate to the underlying themes of many young women in Latinx young

adult literature to which FURIA is a new companion. History is rich and must be heralded, but the

generations of women before who have suffered much—abusive relationships, manipulation, the denial of

safety, to no their dreams—cannot be ignored.

In Rosario, Argentina, the community commends the success of young men, and even Camille’s shine and

increasing promise is in the shadow of her superstar brother. Her parents’ allegiance to his career success

means her hopes already had to be something else without societal pressures. But in Rosario, Argentina a

woman’s survival is first priority. Nationwide, young women are disappearing, found murdered, and worse.

So why read Latinx YA? Because it’s the youth who are bringing the resistance. It is the youth of the

generation who are standing up to say not one more.

For some, it’s National Book Award winning POET X’s Xiomara Baptista who finds her voice through

poetry, for Julia Reyes in the National Book Award finalist I’M NOT YOUR PERFECT MEXICAN

DAUGHTER, it’s writing. For Camille Hassan in FURIA, resistance plays in the space where young women

often have the least autonomy—the body.

For Camille, it’s her body, her history, and her spirit that propels her through a cultural shift on and off the

soccer field. FURIA asks of Camille what success asks of Latinx young women every day. How can you

navigate the pressures and expectations of family, society, love, survival, and how can you have the

strength to take your shot?

For many of us, it too is through FURIA herself. The fury, the grit, the body, the protest, and this is what

Méndez gives the reader. A place to see our fire released on the page and to finally watch her fly.


72

Book Review

BRIAN OLIU

NBA Jam

Reyan Ali

Boss Fight Books, 2019

ISBN 13: 978-1-940535-20-3

The game NBA Jam was built on mythos—there was something about the arcade cabinet that seemed

otherworldly, and not just in the gregarious gameplay, where super-athletes became super-superathletes:

mystifying dunks that soared off of the top of the screen before crash landing with a satisfying

chunk through the hoop, and an automatic Player 2 sprint to get back to the other end of the court.

Instead, it seemed like a game where literally anything was possible, and so rumors started to fill up the

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OLIU 73

stat sheet: that if you pressed the right amount of buttons you could unlock Jordan, that if you won by 69

points you could unlock cheerleaders (topless, of course!) as playable characters. The hidden Mortal

Kombat court that (actually!) turned out to be true. A game with this much bravado and bombast seemed

to always be hiding something just below the surface—not to mention that whenever we see something

this loud and exaggerated, we constantly believe that there is more to it—the same way Shawn Kemp

dunked over the Space Needle in the posters in our bedroom; poster-izing Alton Lister somehow just

doesn’t seem enough.

Despite videogames seeming often that they are made of something magic and ethereal, they are, in fact,

made by actual people of this world. Reyan Ali’s book NBA Jam, from the excellent Boss Fight Books

imprint, which has individual writers doing deep dives into classic video games, discusses the sheer

amount of work that goes into play: taking us through Jam’s days as a hyper serious basketball simulation

in order to impress the licensing board of The Association, to an in-depth look at arcade cabinet

development and marketing during its heyday in the mid-90s. Ali proves himself to be an expert at

gathering information, from interviews with GamePro editors and Midway developers, to scouring the

depths of arcade message boards to post loud nostalgia on his excellent @NBAJambook Twitter account—

unearthing unused cover art for video games that entered our lives for the length of a Blockbuster video

rental, then disappearing from our memories until Ali unlocks them like Air Dog (who, as you learn from

the book, was the son of Acclaim’s Licensing and Marketing Director).

Like all greats, NBA Jam was essentially forced into retirement after multiple unsuccessful comeback

attempts, all never living up to the massive hype of the original and its bigger and wilder Tournament

Edition. In Ali’s interview with programmer Shawn Liptak, Liptak says, “I don’t expect to replicate that for

the rest of my life. It’s one of those magic moments where the right place, the right time, and the right stuff

came together to make that product.” And there it is, straight from one of the programmers themselves:

there was magic in that game and all that surrounded it. Despite Ali’s exhaustive research, interviews, and

expert analysis of how Jam came to be, it’s clear that Ali believes that there is magic here too: that at the

end of all the excavation, there is still mystery—the same way when we observe a twisting dunk in-slow

motion from every angle, we still say, out loud to no one, how did he do that?


74 CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

LESLIE JOY AHENDA is the assistant poetry editor for Augur Magazine. She was educated at the University of

Victoria and is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Guelph. She is an alumna of the Emerging

Writers' Intensive at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Her work has appeared in CV2, filling

Station, Plenitude Magazine, and more. Twitter: @lesliejoyahenda

SARAH C. BECKMANN is a current MFA candidate at Emerson College (Boston, MA). As an undergraduate,

Sarah walked on to the women's crew team at Trinity College (CT), fell in love with the sport, and has been

writing about it ever since. She now lives in Boston, where she is a member of Union Boat Club on the

Charles River and has the opportunity to continue rowing; she also works at the MIT Media Lab in

Cambridge. Her work has been published previously on the Academy of American Poets website.

COLEMAN BIGELOW’s short story “The Counselor” appeared in the September issue of Ink & Sword

Magazine. His flash story, “Pneumatic” is slated for publication early next year. For more information on

his work please visit: https://colemanbigelow.com/ & Twitter: @ColemanBigelow.

MAYTE CASTRO is a writer and educator who resides in Seattle, WA. Originally from Southern California

(daughter of immigrant parents). She writes poetry that focuses on immigration, culture and travel, and

self-expression. Additional poetry by Mayte can be found in braveexpressions.com, https://

wapoetlaureate.org/poetry-to-lean-on/, and Azahares.

NICOLE MARIE DAVISON is a Texas expat living abroad. She attended an outdoorsy college in Colorado but

spent more time snowboarding than studying. After showing jumping horses and riding Italian motorbikes

left her penniless, she took to racing bicycles. She’s also tackled the entire Tour de France, for charity,

twice. One day she found herself on a cargo plane bound for France with her husband, two suitcases, two

horses and four bicycles. Now, she organizes outdoor adventures for a living and likes to read vintage

travel books in her dwindling spare time. Occasionally she writes about cycling and cheese.

GIBSON FAY-LeBLANC’s first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist, won the Vassar Miller Prize and was

featured by Poets & Writers as one of a dozen debut collections to watch. His second book, Deke Dangle

Dive, is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in 2021. Gibson’s poems have appeared in magazines

including Guernica, The New Republic, Tin House, jubilat, FIELD, and The Literary Review, and his articles and

stories have appeared in magazines including Kenyon Review, Portland Magazine, SLICE. He currently serves

as executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and lives in Portland with his family.

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CONTRIBUTOR NOTES 75

BILL GILLARD is a teacher of creative writing and literature at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. His

writing has appeared in dozens of journals, and he is the author of the poetry collection, The Vade Mecum

of the True Sublime, and two chapbooks, Ode to Sandra Hook and Desire, the River. He is co-author of

Speculative Modernism, a study of the origins of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He is the fiction editor

at the literary magazine, Masque and Spectacle. He earned an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Bill

is a recovering youth hockey coach and lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, with his wife and two daughters.

JAMIE HUDALLA grew up in a one-tractor town in Wisconsin, where she had dreams of becoming a vendor

who sold popcorn and peanuts at Minnesota Twins games. She now lives in Roanoke, VA, where she has

two new dreams: Finish her creative writing MFA at Hollins University, and hike every mountain before

she returns to the land of cornfields.

TIM JONES is a fiction writer living in Northern California. His work has previously appeared in The First

Line, Underwood, Into the Void (coming Oct. 2020), and has been featured on the Pendust Radio Literary

Podcast. Originally from the Detroit area, he is a big fan of the Lions, Tigers, Pistons, and Wings, which

means he knows a lot about faith, perseverance, and disappointment.

JAKE McAULIFFE is a cancer researcher living in Galway, Ireland. He has other work published in

perhappened mag. Follow his twitter @JakeMcAwful — or don't, that's okay too.

MATT MITCHELL is a gluten-free, heartbroken, intersex writer living in Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of

The Neon Hollywood Cowboy (Big Lucks, 2021). Find him on Twitter @matt_mitchell48.

BRIAN OLIU teaches, writes, and fights out of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. His publications include three

chapbooks and five full-length collections of nonfiction, ranging on topics from Craigslist Missed

Connections, to computer viruses, to the Rocky film series, to the arcade game NBA Jam. His newest book

of essays, Body Drop: Meditations on Fandom and Pain in Professional Wrestling is forthcoming in 2021 by The

University of North Carolina Press. Follow him on Twitter @BrianOliu.

JERMAR PERRY was born and raised in South Philadelphia, but he didn’t spend most of his days on the

playground. Instead, he spent most of his days daydreaming and writing rhymes. After a few failed

attempts at college, Jermar earned his Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Temple University and later, a

Master’s in social work from Saint Louis University. These days, Jermar lives in St. Louis and is the co-

Founder of The Village PATH where he facilitates a healing and writing circle for Black men.

JUAN CARLOS REYES teaches creative writing at Seattle University. He’s published A Summer’s Lynching

(Quarterly West) and Elements of a Bystander (Arcadia Press). His stories, poems and essays have appeared

in Florida Review, Waccamaw Journal, and Hawai’i Review, among others. He is the chief editor of Big Fiction

Magazine, and you can find him online at www.jcreyes.net.

MATTHEW SCHULTZ teaches Irish Studies and creative writing at Vassar College. He is the author of two

novels, On Coventry (2015) and We, The Wanted (2021).


76 CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO is a poet and artist from the Hudson Valley, living in Chicago. He reads submissions for

Another Chicago Magazine and Frontier Poetry, is a co-founder of “Exhibit B: A Reading Series” presented by

The Guild Literary Complex, and mentors with the PEN America Prison Writing Program. His work is

recently published or forthcoming Blood Tree Literature, The Tulane Review, Boudin, Pangyrus, and Digging

Through the Fat. More of his work may be found at www.alexwellsshapiro.com.

JL SILVERMAN is an MFA Creative Non-Fiction student at Chatham University. Her work has been

published in the Griffith Observer, the Huffington Post, and the medical journals Imaging Economics and CLP.

Two of her poems were published by Ekphrastic Review.

BENNY SISSON is a trans poet and writer, who also works in publishing. She holds a BA from UArizona, and

an MFA in Creative Writing from Adelphi University. Her work has been featured with Lunch

Ticket, Foglifter Press, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. She is currently a Marketing Assistant for

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Book & Media, and lives in her hometown of Tacoma, WA.

ARI TISON’s forthcoming YA novel Saints of the Household (FSG/Macmillan) is set for publication in 2023.

She is the winner of the 2018 Vaunda Micheaux Nelson Award, and her poems and short works have been

published in Yellow Medicine Review, the Under Review, and Rock & Sling. She is the broadside editor for

Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop in collaboration with the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts. Tison

teaches creative writing at the Loft Literary Center and North Central University and lives in Saint Paul,

Minnesota with her husband.

RAISA TOLCHINSKY hails from Chicago and is currently an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of

Virginia. Her poems, essays, stories, and interviews have appeared in Kenyon Review, Muzzle Magazine,

December, and elsewhere. You can find more of her work at www.raisatolchinsky.com.

CASEY MULLIGAN WALSH is a writer and former speech-language pathologist who lives with her husband in

West Sand Lake, New York. She enjoys combining her love of language and years of grist for the memoir

mill to write about life at the intersection of grief and joy. Her work has appeared in Barren Magazine,

Brevity Blog, ModernLoss, TheFHFoundation.org, and Adoptive Families Magazine, among others, and is

upcoming in Fresh.Ink and Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine, a journal of the American Heart

Association. Casey can be found at www.caseymulliganwalsh.com. She is currently querying a memoir, The

Full Catastrophe.

JACOB R. WEBER is a translator living in Maryland. He has published fiction in The Baltimore Review, Another

Chicago Magazine, The Chattahoochee Review, and other journals. His book of short stories, Don't Wait to Be

Called won the 2017 Washington Writers' Publishing House Award for Fiction.

THE UNDER REVIEW


The Under Review - Issue 3 | Winter 2021

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