The Under Review - Issue 5 | Winter 2022

ISSUE 5

ISSUE 5

Winter

WINTER 2022

2022

ISSUE 5, WINTER 2022

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Terry Horstman

MANAGING EDITOR

Meghan Maloney-Vinz

DESIGN EDITOR

JP Bertram

COVER DESIGN

Patrick Sexton

TABLE OF CONTENTS

POETRY

For Safety, Ice Arch at Finish Line Knocked Down Before Race DAVID KILPATRICK | 8

Prayer Time at the YMCA ARIA DOMINGUEZ | 9

Take Me Out With the Crowd MATTHEW SCHULTZ | 11

Chernobyl Baby MAREK KULIG | 19

Flashback to the Smoking Gun TY CHAPMAN | 27

Grateful Dead Tickets AVERY GREGURICH | 44

Dirty Work AVERY GREGURICH | 45

Pitching & Politics M.A.H. HINTON | 51

Icarus RODRIGO SANCHEZ-CHAVARRIA | 59

Perfect Spiral MICHAEL METIVIER | 61

Erasure Fable Found in Defense of Consumer Rights ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO | 66

Photograph: Little League Practice KATHRYN KYSAR | 67

On Walking into a Basketball Gym DANA LOTITO-JONES | 83

CREATIVE NONFICTION

Fizzling to Fragments MATTHEW SCHULTZ | 10

Center DANIKA STEGEMAN LeMAY | 15

Semantic-pragmatic Deficits Among Neurodivergent Synesthetes:

Why is Mario Italian? THOMAS FRANK | 22

Goodfellas MORGAN CHRISTIE | 47

On the Privilege of Losing: Notes of a Detroit Lions Fan RILEY WINCHESTER | 62

Summer Swimmer JESSIE WALKER | 68

The End of Things CLAIRE KORTYNA | 79

FICTION

Shoes EDWARD M. COHEN | 12

Open Tryout WILLIAM MUSGROVE | 17

When Kobe Died SCOTT CHIUSANO | 41

A Non-Starter RUSSELL NICHOLS | 50

The Barbecue LYDIA KLISMITH HANSEN | 52

Beach Girls SARAH FAULKNER | 71

INTERVIEW

with Ross Gay TERRY HORSTMAN | 29

BOOK REVIEW

We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Berry TERRY HORSTMAN | 84

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

6

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Dear readers,

I cannot describe to you the smile on my face the moment Make it Rain came on. I must add it was not a

moment when Make it Rain by Fat Joe featuring Lil’ Wayne typically comes on. I was not in a dance club

with friends or controlling the TouchTunes digital jukebox with a strict ‘bangerz only’ philosophy in a

neighborhood dive bar. I was totally alone, standing on a blacktop, a biting early winter wind rippling

through the mesh of my shirt, headphones in my ears with an unending playlist of early-to-mid aughts

hype songs all queued up, and the ball in my hands.

So, not totally alone.

I posted on social media earlier this year about an annual ritual of mine to always find a playground to

shoot around by myself on November 23rd. To make a long story short, as a kid I loved basketball and I

also couldn’t take a hint. The combination of these two things led to me getting cut from every damned

team I ever tried out for. Until November 23rd, 2005, my senior year of high school. I’ve found a hoop to

shoot around on every November 23rd ever since.

The lyrics of Make it Rain don’t quite hold up today, but its hypnotizing distortion does and it came through

the queue at the perfect time. My jumper, rusty from nearly 364 days of neglect, had finally awoken after

several rounds of clanging off every inch of the court’s double-rim and the ball started cutting through the

wind to find the bottom of the net.

My favorite part of this ritual is it always has a moment of transformation. It’s not always marked by one of

the finest club beats of 2006, but it always comes. The moment when everything besides the hoop and the

ball melts away. The memory of the previous shot is gone the second the ball touches my fingertips. Time

is gone. So is fear. The only two things remaining are the next shot to take, and the joy in my bones that’s

been there since the moment I first fell in love with this game.

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On this November 23rd, as Fat Joe and Weezy were turned up way too loud in my airpods, it hit me how

similar this ritual is to the writing practice. Sentences on a blank page are just like shots on an open court.

The majority of what we write doesn’t get published. So much of the practice goes completely unseen.

The work in the fifth issue of the Under Review is an absolute celebration of ritual. Of commitment to the

craft and practice. Each piece wowed me in a different way. Each piece is symbolic of a different writer

with their own rituals, their own stories, essays, and poems of transformation. Writing that is as

heartwarming and humorous as it is fearless and ferocious.

Writing I am proud to make a home for in the Under Review.

Terry Horstman

Executive Editor

the Under Review

ISSUE 5 | WINTER 2022

8

For Safety, Ice Arch at Finish Line Knocked Down

Before Race

DAVID KILPATRICK

The headline doesn’t faze me, stretching

in my underwear and thinking of Rome:

the arch a hollow monument.

The local company that extracts blocks

for ice palaces in Saint Paul

built a small castle on our town beach.

Firemen sprayed its archway and turrets

with colors, like syrup on snow cones.

In a brief warm spell last week, however,

they swung the wrecking ball. There goes winter,

my wife lamented. The children shrugged.

A false finish. For it is fifty-six degrees

lower now. A false sense of line; I run the race

not to conform. I try to mold this idea

deep in the train of runners as I curse

how the winter trek dashes

out and back, while the summer course

loops twelve miles around the lake. Past,

present and future are one—my mantra

fails me as my feet press through sand

on the icy dirt road. We moved here

to escape the straight corridors, skyways,

pipelines of the city; escalators, towers,

the dense pre-sorted blocks. Here, four round

seasons individually known. But today,

in this line of folks, you’re either

a balaclava or stiff beard at seventeen below.

I curse how my children irreversibly grow.

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Prayer Time at the YMCA

ARIA DOMINGUEZ

Sneakers squeak on the wooden floor

as ten men, and boys becoming men,

huff and shout and surge toward one hoop

and then the other. On the flip side of the divider,

children create a cacophony of of ricocheting balls,

orange orbs bouncing off walls, backboards, rims.

Sometimes they sink one, and grin, but I can’t hear

their celebration over the din. The noise is a substance

I move through while looping the overhead track, as a wind.

Suddenly, it all stops. The absence is startling. I look down

on two rows of people kneeling in a corner, males in front,

hijab-draped forms behind, see the sun setting through

slits of reinforced windows: it’s time for evening prayers.

The huge gym is now almost silent. Each bounce of the ball used

by a Hispanic family echoes loudly, and the two kids tossing

a football in another corner sound like they’re being loud in a library.

The devout drop down and make wherever they are holy, heedless

of the unmoved unbelievers, or the footfalls of the faithless above.


10

Fizzling into Fragments

MATTHEW SCHULTZ

Dad was a poet on the ice, carving commas with his skates and plotting long, arcing narratives from the

blue line to the net. I watched him play in an over-thirty league one year and he still had it. I could tell,

though, that his game had become an elegy for the past when he used to share the ice with his older

brother who waited at the bottom of the page for that frozen rubber end stop to punctuate a plotline

destined to fizzle into a fragment. Nothing could get by him––except opportunity. He joined the Marines

the day before a letter arrived in the mail inviting him to try out for the Cleveland Barons.

I was fourteen when I found their sweaters in the back of the closet. Dad’s was white and tied at the chest:

old school. Across the back, our last name was stitched in red lettering outlined with pale blue thread––

just like the pros. I wore it everywhere, even during the summer months, like some protagonist destined to

make it to the show. But you really can’t judge a book by its cover. That fall I tried out for my high school’s

varsity team and was put on the roster because there weren’t enough kids with grades good enough to

play. Our back-up goalie skated right-wing that season.

We lost every game by at least five goals. I never scored. We had one kid who could play, but it didn’t

matter. This wasn’t basketball where a single superstar could carry the team. It must have been agonizing

for my parents to watch, considering my pedigree. Then, when my arm was snapped like a pencil by a

cross-check into the boards (a plot twist that I never saw coming) the team folded. We all joked that the

team just couldn’t make it without me. Either way, I'm still not sure if what I heard in the stands that night

was a collective gasp or a communal sigh of relief.

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Take Me Out With the Crowd

MATTHEW SCHULTZ

The last time I walked anywhere

in a group was Halloween, 2019.

You were dressed as a baseball

player and I was a beat reporter:

three-piece suit and spectacled

with a panama hat and a flip pad

where I recorded your afternoon

quips punctuated by the popping

of double-bubble and Mom yelling

to remind us both to say thank you.

We walked along Huguenot Street,

stopping at each small stone house

as if we were toe-tagging the bases

on our way around the diamond. I

miss those crowded avenues, the

spontaneous smiles that could light

up the night like stadium fireworks.

From up here in the nosebleed section

of my apartment building, a 7-story

walk-up, I can see people beginning

to congregate on the city sidewalks

and in the park near the ball fields!

I can hear the roar of the crowds––

people shouting at one another out

car windows and through telephones,

across parking lots and intersections

like cross-town rivals hating each other

with the intensity of playoff hopefuls

as if nothing unifying had happened.


12

Shoes

EDWARD M. COHEN

Leon Cameron, Vice President in charge of Artists and Repertoire for the American division of a German

music company, spent the evening at a dreary Carnegie Recital Hall debut of a mezzo who was being

promoted by the manager of the label's biggest star. So how could Leon have turned down the invite? But

the singer had programmed an evening of Hugo Wolf art songs, tough going under ordinary

circumstances, which she delivered with what Leon called a "Head in the Toilet" voice - listening to herself,

pleased with the echoes, wrapped in an aura of sainthood, eyes crossed so she looked slightly batty..

Nevertheless, he was in his usual seat on the aisle and all in the audience - the manager, the singer's

mother - were measuring his response. If he applauded too vehemently, her stock would go up for all the

concert bookers in attendance; if he failed to applaud the word would be out before the final encore. So he

had to remain seated during intermission to prevent anyone asking what he thought. Those in the know

would get the message. On the other hand, he could not leave before bouquets were handed across the

footlights, and even had to put in an appearance at the backstage reception.

Up and coming artists, fawning agents, famous teachers, even reviewers kow-towed before him. His

favorites got a kiss, or even a hug; he was known in some circles for his warmth and paternal nurturance of

talent. But there was a camp in the room who knew his other side. Cross him, it was gossiped, and phone

calls were not returned, recording dates were postponed, contracts were cancelled, even good tables at

restaurants grew harder to come by. Defy him on choice of repertoire, show up late for a session, get too

demanding in negotiations - and, still smiling at your recitals, he would mysteriously cause you to have to

return to Europe to jump-start your career.

Talk about him was always in whispers like those that followed as he finally was able to glide from the

room, stopping to kiss the head-in-the-toilet mezzo's hand. As he hit the cool air of Fifty-seventh Street,

his movements were no longer silken.

Twenty three years ago, when he had given up the piano and taken a job as production assistant in a

classical record company, he had purchased a pair of intricately laced, thickly heeled, heavy leather, oxblood

cordovans. As a concert pianist - and tennis player - back home in Ohio, he had always worn

sneakers, scooting across the court the way his fingers had raced across the keys; bending low for the ball,

scooping it up at unnerving angles, playing so fast sparks seemed to shoot from his hands. But, as far as the

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13

farm boy football players he had been desperate to impress, piano was for faggots. So was tennis. In those

days, so were tennis sneakers.

Now, in his patent-leather pumps, his legs had turned numb. At the reception, everything had been

blurred; faces, mouths, hands to be kissed. But as soon as he passed the first boy in a doorway, sensation

returned to his limbs. He was able to breathe, to think, to feel safe in the shadows. Arranging matters over

the phone would have deprived him of delicious aspects of the adventure.

He strolled back and forth, passing the same boys over and over, discarding some, swiveling back for

another look at others. If he saw a hustler he had already had, he nodded but made it clear he was not

interested in a repeat. If he saw another regular john, he would smile; most often they ignored it. But what

the hell, he was enjoying himself. Back and forth, from Bloomingdales' to Fiftieth Street, from a slide to a

slither, he could feel himself returning to that golden-boy-concert pianist-tennis sneakered-kid.

As he approached a decision, the one he allowed his glance to rest upon had long, long legs and Leon noted

the way his calf muscles strained against the back of his jeans - farm boy type, maybe from Ohio, probably

not, but the fantasy was inviting - slightly sullen, perhaps it was just that he was brainless beneath his halo

of golden hair. Was it bleached? Maybe from California.

"Nice night," Leon said.

"Kinda cold."

Silence. This was not a junkie, nor a psycho. Leon had been at this a long time and had learned to trust his

instincts. He had never been beaten or robbed. Many times he had walked away because he had not liked

the vibes. This kid might turn out to be boring, but that was the only threat.

"Very quiet," Leon said.

"Dead as a doornail."

"Well, it's a weeknight."

"Yeah."

The form was as rigid as a sonata and the players knew their parts; only the kid had given away too much

with "Dead as a doornail." The hint of a moan had been a concession. His price had already dropped.

A few more beats of silence. Leon and the farm boy pretended they did not know what came next but the

basic theme had been established. Now onto the variations.


14 COHEN

"What's your name?" Leon asked.

"Oscar."

"A strange name."

”Well, it's mine!" he replied. Mistake number two. He wasn't experienced enough to lie and and, more

surprising, was prickly about the accusation.

"What's yours?" Oscar asked, trying to cover his defensiveness. Leon liked the facade of disdain and the

fact that it could so easily be chipped away.

"Hugo Wolf," he replied.

"That's a strange one, also."

They both laughed. Leon liked him. He could already picture him in his high school locker room, slipping

into a jock strap. The thought burned into Leon’s cheeks. Oscar noticed. Balls whizzed over the net… and

Leon came home.

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Center

DANIKA STEGEMAN LeMAY

Karl-Anthony Towns, center for the Minnesota Timberwolves, experienced unfathomable loss

in a span of months. His mother, Jacqueline Cruz-Towns, died from complications caused by

COVID-19 on April 13th, 2020. Subsequently that year, Towns’ family lost six more loved ones

to the disease.

In a December 2020 post-game interview, Towns is thoughtful and unguarded, as though his

insides are obsidian. Speaking of himself in the past tense, he says, that Karl died on April 13th.

He’s never coming back. I don’t remember that man. I don’t know that man.

I’m volcanic glass when I say, I’ll never be the same. None of us will be the same. We no longer exist.

Our mothers leave us obsidian we’ll need to lean into a microphone without her. I didn’t

understand mother-shaped chasms until July carved mine.

That woman meant the world to me. More than y’all will ever know and write...It’s such a different pain

than even y’all recognize, Towns says to unseen reporters.

My mom told a story about my birth. The doctor handed my dad scissors to cut the umbilical

cord. My dad hesitated, paled, shook his head and handed the scissors back. Later, my mom

asked my dad if he’d been squeamish about the blood. No. He couldn’t sever the line that tied her

life to mine. He couldn’t bear the weight of it.

A gold heart on a chain rests against Towns’ chest throughout The Toughest Year of My Life, the

documentary he created to honor his mother. The loss of her is something that’s not describable.

The weight disappears with her.

Though her body was unrecognizable in a coma, Towns says of his mother, I could feel her energy.

It’s something a mother--a mother and a child connection that just can never be misplaced. We speak

telepathically. The doctors, they didn’t feel it, but I felt it.

After an ambling June day in 2018, I went into active labor when I lay down to nap. The on-call

doctor at my OBGYN’s office said, You’re fine. Wait an hour and call back. Immediately after I hung


16 STEGEMAN LeMAY

up, my mom called. She heard my voice. Go now, honey. This baby is coming. My husband drove us

the 10 minutes to the hospital. My water broke as I entered the triage room.

I don’t even recognize most of my other games and years I’ve played and how I felt those days.

I recall how it felt to be a person with a mother, but I no longer recognize that person as myself. I

lost her like we lose days, each moment as it passes.

To say it’s been day-by-day is probably an understatement. I think it’s been more moment by moment.

We move through moments. We begin to heal as we can and must, but we’ll never be the same.

For months after my mom died, friends tell me, you’re made of strong stuff. Obsidian is volcanic

glass formed when lava cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. Obsidian is brittle and can’t be

carved, but when chipped can be sharper than surgical steel. Obsidian is from my mom.

Sometimes because she gave it from what was best in her. Sometimes because I sourced a blade

to protect myself from what was worst in her.

At the press conference, when asked by a reporter how he got through the game, Towns takes a

long pause, holds space, shakes his head softly as he considers how best to state what no one can

understand exactly but himself. When you, um, being honest, when you go through what I’ve been

through, you just find a different source of strength. I don’t know how to explain it...

The Towns family celebrates what should’ve been Jacqueline’s 59th birthday, unfurling red and

gold and green confetti against an unapologetically blue sky.

The same July sky my mom died beneath a week later.

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Open Tryout

WILLIAM MUSGROVE

The catcher squatted over home plate. He was trying out, too. I’d driven three hundred miles for this

opportunity, but my head stayed in small-town Iowa. I was standing in my backyard near the fence. With

my feet stacked atop each other, I was walking forward and counting to sixty, drawing the distance I had to

conquer. I dug my cleat into the mound. I dangled my glove. I dug my cleat again. And I waited for my

superstition to come true. All the greats believe in superstitions.

I’d told myself if the radar-gun-holding scout inside the visiting dugout blew a bubble in the next few

seconds, I’d plunk the catcher right in the mitt. Randomness rules my life. I’m always saying if X happens

then Y will go my way.

A pink balloon grew from the scout’s lips. I planted my fingers across the red seams. I hiked my leg. I

twisted my hips. I unwound. I was stored energy. I was kinetic.

The ball landed in the dirt left of the catcher and kicked up a puff of dust. He flung off his mask, making a

big show of my wildness, and put his body in front of the ball. He understood the fundamentals of the

game. A passed ball meant possible runs scored. Me? I pitched like an actor acting.

Genetics blessed me with a five-foot-six-inch frame and stubby limbs, but our genes don’t dictate what we

love. And I love baseball even though the sport doesn’t love me back.

Like most of us, my dad introduced me to the game when I was crawling around in Huggies. When I was

five or six, I’d grip his hand and he’d say: “Looky there, honey, that’s a splitter or maybe a changeup.” This

led to me idolizing hurlers like Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Kevin Brown—basically anyone who

commanded a mound. Unlike players patrolling the premier infield and roaming the lush outfield grass, a

pitcher always touches the ball. As the positive end of the battery, a pitcher controls the pace of the game.

Whether he strikes out twenty-seven in a row or dishes up ten runs, he called his shot.

The catcher tossed the ball back to me. Before sliding his mask over his face, he flashed the scout a look

that said: “This is what happens when you let anyone come to these things.” He was right. I stunk. But what

real pitcher wants to exit the game? Instead of leaving the mound and letting the talented get on with

their tryout, I fiddled with the ball inside my glove and dreamt up my next sign.


18 MUSGROIVE

This time I told myself if one of the parents sitting in the bleachers bragged about their child’s

accomplishments, my curve would dip like the setting sun. Seconds ticked off silence. The catcher, back in

position, glanced at the scout. Then I heard the proud papa: “My kid hit .345 throughout college. He sure

takes after his dad.”

Baseball is full of sons taking after their dads.

I hiked my leg again. I folded my limbs. I concentrated on my stride, on my heel planting first. I

concentrated on making my dad proud. The ball sailed upward and crashed against the backstop. The

catcher popped up and retrieved my mistake. Frustrated and probably cursing me, he beamed it back. The

scout lowered his radar gun and ambled toward the dugout’s exit.

My dad never played high school or college ball. Like me, his size and abilities kept him off teams’ rosters

after little league. However, the way he speaks, you’d think he dressed for the Chicago Cubs.

Growing up, he’d ramble stats at me and have me guess the players they belong to. On summer vacations,

he’d take me to Wrigley and buy me nacho-stuffed helmets. And when I got a little older, we’d watch the

Baby Bears storm the field on cable and spend the day together screaming at umps, discussing our

bullpen, and knocking back a brew or two. Whenever the Cubs lost or failed to punch a ticket to the

postseason, we’d commiserate by saying “next year, next year is our year.” When they finally broke that

baaing curse, the universe felt tilted, because baseball, for us, wasn’t about winning.

That’s why I was floundering on that mound.

I’d convinced myself chucking a ball around in my backyard after working my nine-to-five would transform

me into a pro. I’d convinced myself my purpose in life was on the field. But really I was just searching for

that feeling before the pitcher starts his windup and you look at your dad with anticipation. I was

searching for those little gaps of time before things happened, before the batter struck out or smashed

the ball over the ivy. I was searching for those little gaps of time where we’re all kids.

After college, I moved upstate for a job. I see my family during the holidays. I phone my parents once a

month or so. But the distance, the punching in and punching out, the errands of every day, slowly morphed

baseball, the Cubbies, into just numbers, into Ws and Ls. Hell, life has become nothing but Ws and Ls.

Maybe that’s what happens when you reach adulthood. Those little gaps of time fade away. All the runners

have long touched home.

The scout shuffled out of the dugout. While trudging toward the mound, he gestured to the catcher to

stay put. He held out his palm like I owed him something. I refused to give him the ball. Instead, I

whispered my final superstition and threw.

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19

Chernobyl Baby

MAREK KULIG

How I got my Cold War epithet

all started before the ’06 season.

To give back, Coach signed us up

to donate blood. Later that week the team

was expected to exercise its sympathy.

“Abstain and hydrate, boys,” he advised,

a few days leading up to the drive.

We weren’t so much into this

abstinence — insofar as we understood

its carnal associations — but we loved hydrating.

In fact, we dubbed the fountain drink section

of the cafeteria: Hydration Station.

“Gotta hydrate,” we’d say every morning

at breakfast, “before that dehydration,”

regardless if it was to be induced later

by workouts or alcohol, or sweating out alcohol.

I recall a certain poster from the training room.

It was in the fluorescent wan bathroom, above

the toilet, charting six shades of urine

in the vein of threat alert advisory system.

If yours was see-through through ripe banana,

you were in the clear, but once the hue ascended

into cigarette filter, or leapfrogged

into barrel-aged apple juice,

the description in the box a column over

urged: Actively seek an IV.

Mine was looking glassy with a tinge

of lemon rind the morning I reclined

in one of a half-dozen gurneys


20

arranged in the foyer of the gymnasium.

The phlebotomist handed me some paperwork

and began to prepare the instruments of largesse.

Name, date, address. Height and weight.

He tore open some plastic packaging.

Are you in generally good health?

He attached a needle to a tube

that ran into a kidney-sized pouch.

Travel History, Approximate Dates of Travel.

He held out his hand, “Let’s see.”

I was finishing Country and DOB—

“Born in Poland, huh? And date?”

“1987. Moved to the States in ’92.”

Eyebrows sloped outwards,

he recited some fine print.

Zones, radiation, iodine, thyroid

and a city named Chernobyl I had never heard of.

I took the stairs down to the athletics department,

the floor below the court like a sprawling doomsday bunker.

“Ahh, unlucky,” was Coach’s reaction, but I didn’t know

whether he meant me or prospective donees.

A few weeks later the season was underway.

The team had this 36-hour rule — if gametime

was up to and including 36 hours away,

we couldn’t party, so the night before

the first scrimmage we decided to

vicariously.

We put on the HBO series Entourage,

a show that follows a group of childhood buds

who ride all over LA on the coat-tails

of their movie-star friend. It’s replete with lines

contemplating pensively what happens when we die,

i.e., “I don’t know about the afterlife, but this life is sweet”

only the philosopher behind this insight

is not an existential absurdist but a chubby twenty-something

nicknamed Turtle who’s entering a radiant room

glowing with scantily clad broads.

The episode was titled “Vegas Baby, Vegas!”

And even then, sitting on the couch, cool water

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KULIG 21

running through my core, it hit me as odd

that there was no comma between Vegas and Baby,

as if Baby wasn’t the addressee and was, rather,

born in Vegas (a Vegas baby) the way I was born in Poland.

And if that’s as true as the cuckoo

nuclear testing the US government did

in the deserts of Nevada, is it also true

that some phleb-anthropic Vegas adults get turned away

when the Blood Drive comes to town?

And that, consequently, the Southwest

donates fewer quarts than the rest of the country?

I haven’t watched Entourage in years.

I couldn't even tell you the storyline

of that episode set in Sin City. But chances are

at some point a guy leans over to another guy and rasps,

“Listen, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

Some places are better than others at keeping secrets.

But as someone who had it hidden from himself

in his very own blood for nineteen years

how far they’ll go not to tell, let me keep short

how I got my Cold War epithet:

Chernobyl, baby, Chernobyl!


22

Semantic-pragmatic Deficits Among Neurodivergent

Synesthetes: Why is Mario Italian?

THOMAS FRANK

The chair on the left if you’re sitting on the couch, in the living room, in the house my father shares with his

partner, and my father asking me how I am since I stopped electroconvulsive therapy—I’m in that chair. I

cast my eyes to the carpet; an inward turn isn’t always a retreat. Sitting on my left foot because that feels

best, and leaning forward, and sometimes I can anticipate, but less often with his partner, and I say my

mood swings have settled somewhat, and that the doubts I’d held about my spectrum diagnosis are

extinguished, at last. I make my speech fluent, this despite the fact that there are four of us in the room,

which might otherwise prove an impairingly large group. Inadequacy of that phrase, a weight has been

lifted, owing to the fact that most weights lack singleness, ontological coherence. A better phrase might be

many weights, whole onto themselves, fall from me like auburn leaves brushed from denim-clad shoulders, flutter

across the always already soiled earth, scritch down the highway that goes back to our former home, remnants of

holy, alone in their plenitudes. My doubt is gone, yes yes, but my father remains.

Doubt is a social phenomenon, residing within but also between people, like memory, like rumor, and

those doubts I held about my autism diagnosis came in no small part from ones arising in my father. There

is no good faith route to blame him for voicing his concerns, nor to fault my sister for the same; even

during the intervening decade, the expanded diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder that

allowed me to be placed under that label remain little known, to the point that some have interpreted the

increase in diagnoses as an “epidemic,” while others point to it as a “trendy diagnosis.” Well, no. Intensive

research led to broadened conceptions of the disorder, that’s the spectrum part, which led to increased

diagnoses, which, in theory, led and continues to lead to more people who need services getting them.

Knowing all this, I’m confident that discussing my spectrum diagnosis with my family shouldn’t be a

pedagogical task.

I’m making the case that I’m autistic to my dad and his partner in as intentional a manner as I can. I want to

tell my dad something he’s not prepared to hear, in a manner to which he’s not equipped to listen. The fact

of the matter is that, as I outline my points, I must step into his rhetorical arena. If I’m mellifluous, it’s

because I’ve practiced this speech for weeks. Endless strategy sessions played out in my head. I’ve

anticipated every objection I could think of, rehearsing my responses down to the catch breath, rehearsing

eye contact in the mirror, scrutinizing well-timed smiles to ensure a natural look while tilting my chin low

enough to leave my wonky tooth shadowed, and the crinkle, the crinkle around the eyes. I’m living an

ascetic act of refusal that could be doomed to fail by the tiniest misstep.

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23

During his high school years, my dad’s sport was debate; he made it to the national championships in both

singles and doubles, and his conversation retains a probing, fact driven impulse. He’s a close listener who

asks insightful questions. This tendency allows a space to talk about what you find most important, with

questions that make you feel good and let your guard down. He likes to make you feel good, yes, and

listened to, of course, but he also likes that he doesn’t have to talk about himself. The man is analytical in

the way I wish I was, but I can never quite follow the thrust of a truly complex argument—never construct

one for myself. Often, I’ve been told I lose the forest for the trees, though I’m not sure what that means.

Speaking in four dimensional terms, (for spectra arise from spaces exceeding latitude and longitude), my

father’s arguments emerge from some spectral corner at a right angle at a right angle at a right angle from

my own, soft at first, then build to a frantic pace. It’s always clear where he will go next, like he’s reading

from meticulous mental notecards, but you’re only ever one step ahead, and by his design. The whole

proceedings are like high-stakes Tetris; one sees the next shape in the corner, but after a certain point the

speed and intensity have ramped up to a level where that doesn’t help much.

My own rhetoric is accretive in a Tetris-y way, so that much can be adapted. The difference is I’m drawn to

narrative and language suffused with feeling. I could show my father the results of my ASD diagnostic test,

but instead I find myself tending toward confession. Or maybe not. I want to go saccharine, really truly

actually existing sappiness. I want to grab his shoulders and shake him, tell him I love him more than he

could ever know, but I just wish he could see me for an instant—this hysterical fact of me, insidious in his

periphery, fact he’s sure will clamp down if he allows himself to internalize what I’m saying. I reach

upwards at the love this son is capable of showing: these stories I’ve practiced. But I fall short, listing

symptoms instead, as much from fear of argument, of embarrassment, guilt, shame, as reflecting any

communicative deficit. I catch myself enacting a violent, flicking assault on the outside of my ear canal,

stop myself, press hard into nostril and septum and pinch down before switching which foot I’m sitting on.

Dad plays with a coaster, and I finally start to narrate.

&&&

Ad nauseum, a light brown leather seat on a dark folding chair, wedged between attending tub and a small

shelving unit with foldable cloth boxes we had to rebuy when the initial set was one size too small. Hands

unfold the chair, call the water from the spout, squeak temperature, water begins to open the tub. This

body, pale, not wan, slim from my limited diet, helps, I help, fill the tub, again.

MacBook on the seat, 17th browser tab opened to YouTube, and the top suggestion, the latest video by

Ryukahr, a Northern California streamer with straight-brimmed caps and a vivid beard; for his living, this

man is Mario on the internet. His viewers pay him a not insignificant amount to play Super Mario Maker, a

Nintendo game where players can design and upload their own levels, some bordering on impossible.

Ryukahr plays these fan levels like a Stradivarius—played well, is the modifier. Under his thumbs, Mario’s

deep musics unfold, unfaltering: the most tritonic of his leaps, intervallic devils surround the Italian

plumber with lava, spikes, ghosts and turtley automata; everyday, jumps ring as octaves, pixel-wide

landings shake the earth as mixolydian miracles reforming crumbled cathedral foundations; shell-jumps

and mid-airs reed and bellow, bespeaking a healing mode—justice, finally—a sigh of self-sloughed scabs

and dissolving suture.


24

Lately, the shower’s stricture and solitude frighten me—that’s not figurative—but I’m able to watch

Ryukahr several times a week when I take a bath. Engrossed, I sometimes forget to wash and need to refill

the tub after it has half drained. Some diagnostic criteria the DSM-5 lists for Autism Spectrum Disorder

include: “Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of …behavior,”

“circumscribed or perseverative interests,” while another lists “Hyper or hyporeactivity to sensory input

or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment…e.g., apparent indifference to pain/

temperature.” And admission/admonition, the tub filled with too-hot water is the only place one can really

appreciate Ryukahr. I’ve chosen to watch hundreds of these videos, most lasting between 20 and 30

minutes.

Within the eSports landscape, Ryukahr is the rare player who has the capacity to game competitively but

chooses to play single player games. This choice presents an implicit argument: if I play, they will watch.

He’s keen in understanding what his viewers want. Regular videos are #1. In order to become a successful

streamer, you must release regular content. He also knows his viewers want to see him suffer—Ryukahr

plays the hardest game modes, and a good part of these videos is watching him fail: dozens of Mario’s

deaths, always followed by one tiny victory. The key is that Ryukahr never stops, never gives up. Each level

is a compulsion and any doubt that he might not finish has long since been eliminated from his emotional

vocabulary.

There’s little plot to a Mario level. I’ve come to think of the plumber as a giallo or Italian exploitation star.

Giallo, pl. gialli, the Italian literary and cinematic genre, combines elements of thriller, horror, and detective

stories, all set in a highly stylized world. Giallo is the Italian word for yellow, the color of the paper used for

their early pulps. Most are more familiar with it in its cinematic incarnations. Many Gialli and other Italian

exploitation pictures are short, violent, and often have only minorly intelligible plots, relying more on

dream logic than anything straightforward. Their casts were international affairs featuring actors who, in

their home countries were little more than B-stars—one-off James Bonds and German superstars

disgraced by drink and mental illness—this owing to the common practice of international film

coproduction during the height of the giallo craze (the sixties through the eighties—though still true to this

day), as well as that cinema’s technical oddities (sound wasn’t recorded on Italian film sets, [nor German,

nor Spanish], it was dubbed until the mid-eighties. 1) Mario is just the same: short, plotless, and with

violence taken to the extremes of aestheticization and abstraction. The main character, though still

nominally Italian, is played by an American. Also, gloves are worn, another integral part of gialli.

Ryukahr’s role in these virtual gialli is acting as the producer/distributor—a crucial role in Italian genre

cinema. In a way, the distributor is as important to an exploitation film as the director or screenwriter.

They put the film in front of audiences through acts of creative (re)contextualization. If a film was

successful, other, unrelated films—already produced, (some already released under different titles), or just

beginning production—would be released as “sequels.” When George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was an

international craze in 1978, Italian filmmaker Dario Argento bought the European distribution rights,

reëdited it, added a score by Italian prog rock gods Goblin, and released it as Zombi. The next year,

Argento worked with fellow filmmaker Lucio Fulci to put out his newest film, originally titled Nightmare

Island, as Zombi 2. Tonally and narratively it is more akin to something like The Island of Doctor Moreau or

1 There’s an ideological/political story there, but I don’t find the Italian side terribly compelling after the Mussolini era. On the other hand, Spanish

film dubbing, i.e. regionalized versions including Basque and Catalan dubs, remains more interesting to me at least through the death of the

Generalísimo in 1975 :)

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FRANK 25

even voodoo films like I Walked with a Zombie, except with more eye-gouging and a scene with a zombie

fighting a shark, but that didn’t matter. The main thing was to get butts in seats—by any means necessary.

Before you ask, yes, there was a Zombi 3, two separate films released as Zombi 4, and a Zombi(e) 5, with the

evocative—and accurate—subtitle Killing Birds. The same fake-out worked with The Evil Dead, Jaws, The

Terminator, even The Exorcist. Ryukahr’s game, like the exploitation distribution game, is to take unrelated

levels and recontextualize them, give them continuity. All Argento needed to do was slap on a new title. A

streamer does the trick with the addition of a simpler element than even that: they add themselves, a tiny

face in the bottom right of the screen, devoid of subjectivity.

Ryukahr has learned that his viewers don’t want much personality from him; he makes few, if any, jokes,

repeats himself often, and reveals very little about his personal life. For a long while, he seemed wary to

admit that the woman who sometimes appeared in his videos was his girlfriend (they’ve since married)—

perhaps if those viewers who thought Ryukahr was cute thought he was single, they might click on yet

another video. Yet it might be less complicated than that. Most of Ryukahr’s time in his videos is spent

narrating what he’s doing. Because he plays several levels in each video (six to ten), his continuing

presence adds a story where there might otherwise be nothing at all 2. I’d like to take this opportunity to

repeat: I’ve watched hundreds of these videos. I buy the story he’s selling and he feels like a friend (he’s

not). This beardo’s wily tricks have enchanted me completely, or maybe I just like to do the same thing

again, and again, and again.

&&&

I’m at the edge of my seat, still in my father’s living room, close to crouching in front of it. This wasn’t the

story I wanted to tell about rubbing Legos on my lips and faking sick every day of public school so I

wouldn’t have to go be bullied by the boys I thought were my friends. I go off the rails, start ranting to my

father about things outside his realm: federal climate change policy, the distinction between antisemitism

and antizionism, and the idea that autistics lack a “Theory of Mind,” much ingrained in some circles.

(Abbreviated as ToM, lol, the absence of which is sometimes called mindblindness—a word too melodious

to find offensive.) Dad nods, is nodding. The story goes that we lack the ability to get into other peoples’

heads and understand that they, too, have thoughts, feelings, deep-seated inner lives. The offense I take is

as an essayist. I’ve spent huge fucking swaths of my life trying to understand and more effectively

communicate with my father. The idea that I wouldn’t even know he has an inner life, much less be able to

access something of it leaves me crestfallen—not at some deficit I perceive in myself, but at the flagrant

incuriousness, the complete rejection of self-doubt, flaunted by those trying to say something about

autistic people.

Why must neurodivergent rhetoric hew so closely to that of the neurotypical? Why couldn’t an autistic

rhetoric inhabit a lyricism, embrace contradiction, eschew coherence? I’m still talking about the essay.

(Dad raises an eyebrow.) The future of the essay is neurodivergent: obsessive, encyclopedic, shapely,

textural. Maybe even a little confused, by an outsider’s standards. And maybe this confusion is an illusion

masking a generative, beloved doubt, behind which lies strength. A doubt confronted, conquered, begets

strength. Autistic argumentation and aesthetics can inform a literature of IEPs, of Dewey decimals, of

2 There is one game mode with a nominal plot, and it is the same one that has existed in every Mario game: evil Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach and

it’s up to Mario to save her. This is such a given that it can be dismissed in the same manner that we might dismiss “There is a problem, and

someone must fix it.”


26 FRANK

course, but they will also create one of tenses, moods, and modes that most haven’t yet imagined. This will

occur in the interstices between narrative, image, argument, and fact—but don’t forget your Yvonne

Rainer: feeling are facts. Dad’s glazing over by this point, and I turn back inside.

It’s quiet for a long time. Bodies in extension, mirror-twinned ecologies of consciousness and experience

fill this room in dissonant keys. No ones’ fault. My difference lacked a name until I was diagnosed ten years

ago, and I nearly forgot that name in the meantime. Now I’m in a place where the label means something.

But there is nothing novel about the experiences, feelings, behaviors.

My dad continues to play with his coaster. There’s compassion, even understanding on his face. “I’m so

happy for you that you have this new understanding of yourself.”

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27

Flashback to the Smoking Gun

TY CHAPMAN

To the campus we could never afford, but crept through sometimes,

not on nothing nefarious, just hooping with a cousin

& his friends, & some boys who been spoon fed

since they were twinkles in an iris. I recall like yesterday’s

refuse, the way them White boys watched you climb so high

above their heads, just to shove you down at the peak.

I remember perfectly, the way you shot up in a flash, ready

to stand ground and then some. How I stopped you,

grabbed hold with each bit of conviction I could muster,

said, Homie, look around. These boys will sue us out our socks,

if luck is on our side. & There was too much fever in my vigilance

perhaps, but I refused to lose you. Refused to read an article ending with officer;

narrative expurgating your name. I remember, through just rage, you heard the somber

wisdom in my words. You relented & we continued the game, shoulders heavy

with assorted chips. White boys grinned, still silver-ladened-lips, as you limped

to get back on defense. Remember what happened next? I do a little—still recall the second shove,

the third, the moment you hit the ground. The moment I discovered what it was

to be wrothful, how I dove like a prey-bird, seeking the throats of penny-tongued poachers.

How I needed each cubic inch of smoke & it took a great deal of mediation

to keep me from evening the score—for a moment, logic & consequences were trifling things.

All I knew for certain were those posh perpetual pups, who never scuffed paws for nothing,

thought to put hands on the man who was perhaps my only friend.


28 CHAPMAN

I didn’t think of how we shouldn’t be there—security lazing round the alcove,

nor how quick it goes from sound scuffle to an operator & body bags.

I remember you rose to your feet, muttering, my nigga.

& Proceeded to behemoth through the paint ‘til the sun got sick of spectating.

How we kept it hoops the remaining duration,

how they never, ever, put a hand on you again.

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29

Interview With Ross Gay

TERRY HORSTMAN

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against

Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of

Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book

Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry

Award. His new poem, Be Holding, was released from the

University of Pittsburgh Press in September of 2020. His

collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by

Algonquin Books in 2019.

Ross is also the co-author, with Aimee Nezhukumatathil,

of the chapbook "Lace and Pyrite: Letters from Two

Gardens," in addition to being co-author, with Rosechard

Wehrenberg, of the chapbook, "River." He is a founding

editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online

sports magazine Some Call it Ballin', in addition to being an

editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of

the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He also

works on The Tenderness Project with Shayla Lawson and Essence London. He has received fellowships

from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at

Indiana University.

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 HeadFake, 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.


30

This interview was conducted virtually and originally aired as a podcast episode of Under Review Radio. It

has been edited for publication. To listen to the entire interview check out the episode HERE.

Terry Horstman: Ross, thank you so much for doing this. We met briefly at your last reading at The Loft

Literary Center in Minneapolis, which feels like a million years ago at this point, but it's so good to talk

with you again.

Ross Gay: Of course. Thank you for having me.

TH: Obviously, this is an interview in an issue and a podcast of a sports-themed literary journal and I've

read much of your work that touches on sports and games and play and movement. So I just want to begin

by asking you what roles did writing and also sports play in your childhood? Was there a moment when it

dawned on you that these two passions were two passions that can be in conversation with each other?

RG: When I was little, I had nothing to do with writing. School was easy for me until I was probably 12 or

13 and then there was some moment in school where it was a click... I can't remember exactly when it was.

Probably many things were going on. Some of it was probably actually my body changing and hormonal. I

don't know, stuff happened at home. But there were moments in my relationship to school, and I still hold

onto these moments, that I realized if people were telling me to do shit but they weren't explaining why I

should want to learn a thing or do a thing, it did not convince me to do the thing or to have any interest in

the thing.

So I can remember right at a certain point around that seventh, eighth grade when I had to start thinking a

little bit in school in a different kind of way. It was easy for me, some of it, back in the day. But then I just

started to be like, "Ah, I don't care." So it was also probably like fifth, six, seventh grade, around that same

transition. That was maybe one of the heights of my reading life as a kid. I was reading Power Man and

Iron Fist comic books. I liked comics. I think they came out weekly, but they could have come out monthly. I

can't remember. But I collected them all.

When I turned around 12, 13, I got deep into skateboarding. So I was reading Thrasher Magazine and

TransWorld Magazine pretty religiously. It's so fun to answer these questions because they [memories]

always become fuller. The more you think of them, the fuller they become. But I wasn't reading what you

would think. I wasn't reading books and I had no sort of interest in the idea of being a writer.

I was a sports guy. I wanted to be a professional football player. So I played basketball and football through

high school. Then I played football in college and had designs on trying to figure out how to play pro

football. After I graduated from college, I had what felt like an unsatisfactory college football career which

is like 10,000 stories. Now that I'm twenty-five years past it, I'm like, "Ah, man, you're just working through

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HORSTMAN 31

stuff. Just working through stuff." But anyway, how did your question go? Did you say the sort of

intersection of the two?

TH: Yeah. I actually can skip ahead a little bit, because I was going to touch on your career as a collegiate

football player. I read in a previous interview that you did, that it was about sophomore year of college or

so that you started discovering poetry or considering poetry. So, was Ross the football player and Ross the

poet in conversation with each other right away, and what was the experience like of discovering that you

were going to walk away from football dreams and pursue writing?

RG: That's right. I mean, the way that I think of it, and again, it's always more complicated, but one of the

ways that I think of it is that in my second year of college, in a survey of 20th century American poetry

class maybe, the professor, David Johnson, must have been able to tell I wasn't engaged at all. He assigned

me a presentation on the poet Amiri Baraka. I mean, I was doing nothing in school. I mean, I was writing

papers for other people, but I was doing nothing. I was doing nothing on my own behalf for school. I was

just so blown away by this poet and there was a poem in particular, it's called An Agony. As Now.

There are many things that have meant so much to me about Baraka. Among them, his changes through

his life. That he's just a writer who just changes, a writer and thinker and person who lets us watch him

change. But he also is articulating a kind of relationship to [rage].

I went to college and it was like...a ton of money. It was free for me because I played football, but I'd never

been around a bunch of people who had money like that. I'd never been around a bunch of people who all

drove nice cars, that kind of thing. The football players at that place were, by and large, the poor kids on

campus and all the black males on campus were football players and there were a few basketball players.

So there were all of these things that I was encountering that we were just making me full of rage. A really

sort of not quite articulate rage, complicated rage that this poem to some extent sort of helped me with. It

was the kind of rage that was percolating my whole life. But it was a little bit boiling over.

An Agony is Now is a kind of amazing poem. It's a dense, complicated poem. It's still profoundly mysterious

to me. I feel like I'll read that poem for the rest of my life and it'll keep changing meanings to me. But then a

poem like that would be the thing to turn on the engine of a kid and be like, "Oh, I want to try to do what

he's doing it."

TH: I love that you're able to zero in on that moment. You mentioned the click earlier and maybe that

wasn't a night and day difference, but I love that you're able to select one piece that pinpoints the moment

where something changed in your mind and you were able to consider poetry.

I have to talk to you about another person who's had a lot of influence on you, one of the many subjects of

your latest book Be Holding. That is, Dr. Jay Julius Erving. There’s so much I love about that book, but I also

love that it starts with that quick note at the beginning, directed to readers of a particular age who may

not know who Dr. Jay is. What role did Dr. Jay's status as a hero of your childhood play in your approach to

this poem and is one of the intentions of the poem to preserve that superhero childhood-like awe that's


32

really only possible to attach to sports figures or heroes

when we are of that certain impressionable age?

RG: I love that question. Yeah. It's an interesting thing

because I think the poem at the beginning really, I think,

introduces us to this way of thinking, you know you're

with someone who's a basketball guy because my favorite

line in the poem might be, "Yo, remember Shawn Kemp?"

TH: Yes. I love that line so much.

RG: So it's sort of like a deep student and a door to the

game. It's funny, though, because that kind of familiarity

and that kind of parlance and that kind of ease with the

thing, with the subject, I think that feels to me like the

kind of, that, "Yo, remember Shawn Kemp," that's a little

bit superhero-y. You know?

But it's funny because Dr. Jay, though he was a kind of

super heroic figure in a certain way when I was a kid. I was

born in 1974 and was coming to consciousness about

things, say in like 1980, We moved to the Philadelphia

area in '79. Then in '80, '81 I think they (76ers) went to

the finals. I was aware. My dad was a basketball guy, so I

was aware of Doc, very aware. I probably had a Dr. J t-shirt. Any kid would. It was just like that. It is not too

much at all to say that he was very much like Michael Jordan would be later, though there was not the

machinery of proliferating images in the way that Michael Jordan came up with. But he would be in

commercials, those Converse commercials and Spalding commercials.

TH: Right.

RG: He was around and he was on. We watched basketball and so I got to see Dr. J and I have to say, if you

watched any game that Dr. J plays in, it's funny. You can go watch any game. He will do three or four things

that are like, "That's not right."

[Laughter]

TH: Yep.

RG: Yeah. It's just the way it is. Now you see Ja Morant, I've been looking at his highlights. It's a little bit

like, "Man, that's not regular." Or a lot of these folks, but he was, it was weird. So to come up as a little kid,

and to see this person as a magician on the court, there was a way that he holds, or held that kind of place

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HORSTMAN 33

in my brain. That being said, in the poem, I feel like he's not at all super-heroic. I feel like he's doing a move

that is an actual impossibility.

He's doing something that's an actual impossibility, but the way the poem approaches his particular

moment of impossible flight and impossible genius and visioning, it's something other than super-heroic.

There's some way that, and I don't know, it's funny, the question is such a great question because it makes

me think. Even when doing whatever you call it (promotion) for the book, people were like, it’s a “tribute to

Dr. J," and I'm like, "Er, it's not a tribute to Dr. J."

It's a study. It's a study of this one move that he did. It's a study of this. Then it goes into his background a

little bit, but really, to me, it's a study of this impossible move that Dr. J did. Like I said, people don't write

books where an image of a basketball player is floating around throughout as a central guide of

meditation. So, of course, I understand it, the feeling is like, wait a second, you're telling me this is not a

book about Dr. J?

TH: Right.

RG: But to me, I'm like, it's not actually a book about Dr. J, although I'm looking so closely because Dr. J in a

way is a guide through the book. We’re looking at this move as a guide.

TH: In this move, the “victim” of Dr. J’s impossible flight was/is Mark Landsberger, who you handle so well,

so gently. It’s almost an ode or a tribute. Because today the culture of basketball suggests that when

someone gets dunked on or embarrassed, we're not very gentle or expressing admiration to those people.

I mean, whenever I see someone get dunked on, I'm like, "At least he tried."

RG: Totally.

TH: "And didn't just get out of the way." I love how it keeps coming back to Landsberger and how he did all

of the correct things that a good defender would do and it still didn't matter.

RG: Totally. He did it all. He was totally admirable. There's also this thing that I keep doing, Because this is

a poem that's thinking hard about America and race and all this stuff. Don't reduce Landsberger. This is

about two dudes playing basketball. That's what this is. Landsburger is not an allegory, he is a dude, a six

foot nine inch dude, trying his best, you know.

TH: Speaking of this being a study of Dr. J's move and him serving as the guide, are there any other iconic

plays either from childhood or just elsewhere in sports that may inspire a book length poem slash study

out of you?

RG: Yeah. Great question. You can tell from the book, I'm a big Iverson guy. I love Allen Iverson. Not

everyone could tell from the book, but you probably can. I could easily see a book length study of him.

Actually, speaking of Shawn Kemp, if you ever are like me and want to watch Shawn Kemp's hundred best

dunks.


34

TH: I always want to watch Shawn Kemp’s best dunks.

RG: There's one where it's so neat. This guy was such a beautiful ball player and he dunked so hard on this

dude and the dude falls and gets up immediately and they immediately dap each other up.

The dude's like, "Damn! Good move." And Kemp's like, "Man, thanks." And it's just this moment of such

tenderness actually. It's the elevated moment where, to me, it's basketball. The beautiful move is made

extra beautiful by the good contention, by the good defense. And this dude contended well but Shawn

Kemp was just a little higher and it worked out for Shawn Kemp and they both bounced up together and

almost embraced as a way of being like, "We just did that."

"We did that. I just made your thing more beautiful," and he's like, "Yo man, you just made my thing more

beautiful."

TH: Anyone who's read interviews or is familiar with their work knows you mention tenderness and write

about tenderness in moments that are either directly about sports or adjacent to sports. We’re talking

about this right now with Kemp, but what is it about just the act of sports and competition and playing

that make it such an effective storytelling medium for acts of tenderness?

RG: It's a great question. I feel like there's probably many reasons for that. I'm writing about this quite a bit

right now. I'm writing a little bit about playing college football and how so often the tenderness was born

of a training in against-ness. So often you had to make an enemy and the enemy (for me then) might be

Holy Cross or the enemy might be Bucknell or Army.

And from that against-ness was grown this togetherness that sometimes looks like tenderness. For me, I

want to raise the question of like, is it tenderness when it's born of against-ness? And so often also that

capacity for tenderness is this thing, this enemy in say football. Where I grew up or how I grew up learning

football, which is also to say learning a certain “masculinity,” there was this other thing, a persistent enemy

and that enemy would be something like the female or the queer. There's a beautiful Eileen Myles essay

that I'm trying to talk with and they say, the woman, the queer and the oddly behaving man…and that is a

figure I keep returning to in this essay as a way, as a persistent thing that in certain kinds of homosocial,

football locker rooms, for instance, as I experienced it, the togetherness could often be cultivated against

those things.

I want to suggest that it needn't be. I want to suggest of course that there's a more sort of tenderness that

is born of its own need, not of its need against anything. Born of its own need. All that being said, I suppose

there is a way that we relate to competition and we think about competition as a kind of battle. There's

probably something very seductive to us about the way that in the midst of battle, people do these soft

things for each other. But I'm really suspicious of that actually. I'm really suspicious of that. Nothing moves

me more than when I think of when I tore my MCL against Colgate. You know, mean Colgate.

I can picture, because I'm a tough guy, I jump up immediately and my leg's fucking flopping around. My

buddy Glenn is on the sideline running out to the punt return team, and he's screaming to get people out

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HORSTMAN 35

there to help me. That whole thing of like, ah... It is so tender, it melts my heart and when I picture it, I

picture in this, it's dusty and it's like, all the long history of battle is in my imagination, my historical

imagination of this stupid fucking event of a little football. Yeah, but I think those stories maybe cultivate

in us a certain kind of ability to be moved especially because it's so violent. And there are these glimmers,

but like I said, I want to wonder about that.

Actually, I want to wonder about it in a way like this too. Those games where there's refs and there's

coaches and there's a definitive winner and loser in a certain way, those aren't games that I'm actually

interested in at all anymore. Look, I watch, probably later today, I'll watch a little House of Highlights, want

to see what Ja did and what fucking Steph Curry did, I'm going to do that.

TH: Of course.

RG: Pickup basketball is a completely different phenomenon. And a game without refs and without

coaches, which is to say, a game without the structures, the hierarchical structures, the policing

structures, the legislative structures, but that are instead, if you were to talk about certain different kinds

of governance that are horizontal, where every time a new five gets on the court, the rules actually change

because not everyone calls a foul the same way.

TH: Right.

RG: For those of who don't know, in pickup basketball, there's five people on the side. You have to

assemble that five, in any number of ways, in different places and they're going to say it maybe a little

different. You know, you might say, “Who's next? Who's got next? Who's last next? My next.” And then that

team gets on and the winner stays on the court and then that team gets on and then you play, and then the

winner stays on the court, and it goes on forever. So among the things that you learn is that the process is

different every time; every new gathering of players, every new assemblage of players constitutes a new

game, a new set of rules.

It changes. The foul has changed. How hard you can hand check someone has changed. There are some

things that are static, like out of bounds is pretty much out of bounds. If you're playing with ones and twos,

that's pretty much static, but not always. But the real nuts and bolts of the game, which is the

interpersonal dynamic, the shifty stuff changes every single time because there's not a God and there are

no gods. You always have to practice being invited in, in pickup basketball because part of the way you get

on that five that's on the sideline is you say, "Hey, can I play?"

Can I get on? Can I get in? You got a spot? Then if you're the one who has the team, you have to be a host,

you have to learn how to invite people in. You know, there's all kinds of stuff that goes on, it's just human.

All of these lessons are being learned in pickup basketball. We are the ones determining the flow and

movement and organization of this game. In those moments, in that setting, I feel like I see the most

astonishing tenderness that I believe in wholeheartedly. I don't believe that it's like a moment of reprieve

from this other kind of brutality. I believe the whole thing is a kind of practice at tenderness.


36

One time, there was a breakaway. I was like, 26. I was coming back on defense and I was flying down the

court and I went to block the shot, I flew, then BOOM right into this pole behind the basket and I hit

myself right between my legs. I did not hit my testicles, thank God, or else I would not have gotten up. But I

am who I am, and boom, I stood right up. And everyone on the court was like, "NO!"

And of course, they all thought I hit my nuts, but I didn't. Still, they wouldn't let the game go on until I had a

few minutes to sort of be like, "Hang on. Just see. Just wait." This is like a full game. It was a busy game. And

it was one of the best courts and all of that. There was a wait. And people were like, "No, hang on." And

then they could tell, "Okay, he's okay." It might have been three or four minutes of people being like, "Nah,

wait. Just wait. Just kind of shoot at the other end." They're like, "No, let's wait and check it. All right, he

looks okay." That is one instance that I just love. It's so beautiful to me. One of the things with those courts

is that they can be intergenerational. [Click here an anecdote from Ross’s younger days on the pick up

courts}

TH: I love that. I want to segue this into asking you about your essay in Lit Hub. Have I Even Told You

About the Courts I've loved? If I had to choose one piece of your work as my favorite, that would probably

take the cake. But it's just so interesting because pickup basketball is just a totally different ecosystem

from any other sort of structure of sports. You're talking about againstness and enemies, but in pickup,

you can play against a team, lose, and make an enemy of who you're playing with, someone who calls like a

bullshit foul or someone you argue with. But how the fives can shake out, it's not a consistent thing

because the total number of people ebbs and flows. So that person you're against and making an enemy of

could be your teammate two games from now.

RG: Boom. You nailed it. That's the thing that I wasn't even thinking about. That's it. It makes no sense. But

you're right. In pickup, it's like you're not always playing against the same people. And the people that you

think of as being like, "Oh, that's my nemesis." Your nemesis very well might be feeding you the ball next.

[Click here for a narrative peek into Ross’s one-on-one workouts, where he invents ways to play hard,

noncompetitively.]

TH: One of the courts you mention in the essay is the Old Gym at Carlow University. You describe it as like

a greenhouse in your memory. And anyone familiar with your work, knows you also write about your

gardening a lot. And basketball and gardening are two subjects that come up often. I just want to know

what are the similarities between basketball and gardening for you? The reference to “the fig tree (by

Palumbo) is growing back” also made me think of this. Are those two things that are often in conversation

with you and in your work?

RG: I love that question. It's funny, because it's almost like the way that the meditation on Dr. J's move in

that poem–it's a kind of patience. It's a kind of practice of patience and looking very slowly. Intensely and

slowly and steadily and with curiosity. That's a kind of mode of witness I think that I'm trying to wonder

about and practice in that poem. And in the garden, I think it is the case that gardening encourages a kind

of non-impositional witness.

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HORSTMAN 37

There's obviously modes of gardening where you just mow everything down and you blast the shit into the

soil and you monocrop. You just grow one thing. Part of the destruction of the land is certain modes of

relating to the land. But I think really good loving gardeners are really curious, are patient, are asking what

wants to grow where and trying to pay attention. They might be paying attention by seeing how much

light is in a place or if water gathers or what is growing there already. Like, "Oh, if there's a lot of this

growing there, maybe it's already heavily calcified or a calcium area. Maybe this might work or this might

not work." Or what things grow in tandem together, like all of these communities in a garden.

So that's one thing. I feel like that kind of very slow, patient witness is a way to be a gardener. That feels

like a constant practice of being a gardener. And I just want to say that it feels like that's a little bit what

I'm trying to do with that move, which is not about basketball. That's actually about looking and about

writing maybe. Like basketball, being patient and curious with the garden, I feel like that's a practice. It's

something that you have to cultivate by doing and doing again and doing again and doing again. And

ideally, having other people show you how they do it and doing it with them again and again and again. And

playing ball, for me anyway, is a thing that you practice. And you don't only practice your 15 footer, but you

practice how to make the game as meaningful to you as possible.

So part of the practice might be after you shoot all of your warmup with 150 15-footers, it might be that

part of the practice is thinking, "Well, how do we play this game and let this game help us cultivate what


38

we really want to cultivate?" So maybe we should think differently about what we do with points. Maybe

that's one of the things that we got to do. And that might be kind of analogous. Both endeavors require

practice and repetition and study and all of that. But that kind of asking the court what it is that we're

actually supposed to learn, it's very much like asking the garden very much what it is we're supposed to

learn. And it's like you've got to listen to both things. You know?

TH: For sure. I love that. In this essay too, you write about Seger Court specifically, and that being sort of

the first place you saw “a court as a site of care and a ball as a practice of care”. Was there something

specific about that particular court that helped you realize this? Was it just maybe that was the right

moment in time, but was also, I'm wondering if there's something in the setting like the surface, the rims,

the backboard, the smell?

RG: That court was this little bastion. A lot of the courts where I'd grown up were a little bit tucked away. I

grew up kind of just north of Philadelphia, so the courts wouldn't be like right in the middle of a city block,

you'd drive to the court or something and there'd be a parking lot.

There was all of this profound tenderness going on that I wasn't yet quite aware of, or I didn't know to

articulate it as such. But I think being 23 and 24 and really starting to sort of think hard about what it

means, the very beginning of a lifelong endeavor to think hard about what it means to be a loving

individual or a loving sort of participant in something. I saw that this court, which was busy as hell,

smacked in the middle on Lombard and 10th, busy, always people walking by to the store, walking by to

work, whatever. It had a kind of a theatrical element to it because there is a fence along the sidewalk so

that people would stop and watch.

This was a court three or four blocks from the projects, and so folks would be coming up to play, it would

be automatic that people were coming. And because the kids lived right nearby, I'll never forget Gerald

telling me, he's the one who's banging on the doors and being like, “Come on! Time to go play,” with these

kids who were like 14 or something, and it's 7:30 in the morning when we started. And it's hard for a 14-

year old to wake up at 7:30 but Gerald, who's one of the elders, would be like, “Come on, let's go play, it's

time to play.” And which is not like, “It's time to play,” it's like “I'm taking care of you now, I'm taking care of

you, I'm showing you how to do this thing.”

And maybe I was at a certain age where I was able to witness these modes of care that I had also been

because I always had that too. I always had some older dude being like, come on, this is how you do it. My

eyes were sort of open to this method of pedagogy, I call it and it's kind of like come along pedagogy, come

on, come on, I got this thing to show you, you might love it or maybe more to the point sometimes it might change

your life, it might change your life. This might get you an education. Also this is like this really beautiful mode of

being in a community that I want you to witness, I want you to participate in, and I want you to learn how to do so

that you can do the same thing when you're my age.

And there's a 13-year old in your neighborhood to be like, “Come on, come on, I got to show you this

beautiful thing,” whether it's a basketball court or whether it's a garden or whether it's like learning how

to fix bikes or whatever. It became very evident to me that one of the sites of this kind of intergenerational

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HORSTMAN 39

teaching and care, basketball courts are really beautiful places to study it. And I had been brought up in

them too, but I didn't know what was happening often. And looking back then, I'm like, oh, yeah, there's all

those beloved teachers that I have.

TH: It kind of mirrors the writing community in that way. I feel like so many people I talked to there was,

and it's a little bit different because writing is in itself an act a solitude, but it seems like I haven't thought

of it in those terms before, but the come along pedagogy is sort of the best way to cure imposter syndrome

which so many of us struggle with.

RG: That's right.TH: Yeah. I had so many people point out to me that you don't have to get an MFA or any

certain degree or certificate to be able to do this, to get access and permission to do this. You just get to do

it.

RG: That's right. And it's kind of the way that in our solitude, we're always kind of in the presence of those

people who are with us. We're in our solitude, we're actually right in our minds or they're right in our

mouths and they're ready to come out.

TH: I love that. Well, thank you so much for that. And thank you so much for your time, Ross, this was so

fun. I could talk basketball and writing all day so this was a privilege. Thank you again for taking the time to

be here.

RG: Thank you. Thank you, let's do it again.


40

When Kobe Died

SCOTT CHIUSANO

Slim had his back to the basket and Beans was on him tight like a thermal. One fake to the right with his

bony elbows and then Slim lifted off with his wiry frame, turned in the air, shot over Beans.

“Kobe!” he shouted. The ball caught back rim, hit the hardwood, rolled. The game stopped. Beans just

stared at him and Loafer at the top of the key put his foot on the ball to stop it from rolling to the other

side of the court. Ched studied his laces like he studied most things, Diego leaned against the basket to

stretch out his back, which was always hurting. K-Pop used the toe of his shoe to rub out a sweat spot that

had fallen from his forehead. All this was normal, and yet nothing was the same.

“What, too soon?” Slim said.

“Yeah motherfucker, too soon.” Beans gave him a light shove and Slim stumbled backwards, mimed

blowing a whistle for the foul call.

“Specially if you’re gonna shoot it like that,” said K-Pop. “Man’s rolling over in his grave right now.”

“Bro even six feet under Kobe got a better shot than Slim,” Loafer kicked the ball up to himself and flipped

it at the basket.

“Yo they should put him eight feet under, you feel me,” Diego said, pointing one finger up at the sky.

“I don’t think they even buried him yet, honestly. Might not be a body.” Ched was their white boy, white like

cheddar, always cheesin’. He was smart, not because he was white, just because he was.

“Ah Ched c’mon man, ain’t nobody wanna think about that,” Slim said.

“I feel you.”

“Somebody wanna check ball?” Loafer was still standing at the top of the key. Diego picked the ball up and

spun it once high in the air, let it bounce a couple times as if making sure gravity still applied. How could

they be sure, when someone who had always resided in the clouds could come crashing down like that?

Ched and Slim joined Loafer behind the three-point line. Diego and K-Pop matched up but Beans

hesitated, slow to return to the top of the key. They couldn’t go on without him, needed their sixth, and like

with most things they waited to see what Beans would do, if only to follow his lead. They watched him

reach down to touch his toes, watched him bounce on his heels, stretch back his quads before Beans

finally signaled for the ball and checked it to Slim, low to the ground so Slim had to bend to pick it up.

“Try that shit again and see what happens,” Beans said, and the game continued.

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41

When Kobe died they all met at the Y like usual. It was Sunday, and this was their church, even though K-

Pop’s grandma made him really go to church and Ched’s family said Grace before dinner. But that wasn’t

religion. Not really. Man-to-man defense was religion and perspiration was two fingers-worth of Holy

Water to the forehead and admitting you were getting burned down low by Loafer in the post was

confession and you were always praying, of course, every time the ball left your fingertips the only thing

you had left was prayer.

Nobody brought a ball that night, just an unspoken thing, this wasn’t about playing. It was about

something else that nobody, not even Ched, was going to mention. They figured Beans would have it the

worst of them. He was the last one to get there, and Diego wondered aloud if he would even show up at

all, but when he did they were whole again, and each of them dapped up Beans because LA was where he

grew up, because Kobe’s game-winner against the Nugs was the first and last game he saw live with his

pop. Kobe’s Lakers were Beans’ first love, and sometimes they thought he might never love again.

Beans was the best of them, and it wasn’t really close, the only way any of them could ever hope to guard

him was when his restructured knee was aching mad and he was two or three or four steps slower than

normal, and even then he could shoot over Loafer, who had a good six inches and 60 pounds on him, and he

could snake his way through Slim’s unnatural wingspan and Ched, well Ched was Ched and didn’t do much

in the way of defense. When Beans moved to Brooklyn in middle school to live with his grandma, after his

pop got locked up for good, he already had his nickname and nobody ever questioned it, he was that

talented, so talented they had to pluralize Kobe’s middle name, just Bean wouldn’t have been enough. His

junior year at Lincoln when the scouts from Kentucky and Duke and Mich State started showing up he

shredded the ACL in his right knee and that was it, the scouts forgot about him, he was consigned to a

future of crossing up clowns at the Y and nobody believed it when they said Beans was supposed to be

going places, like the NBA kind of places, not that he ever told anybody that, they had to do it for him,

Loafer and K-Pop and Slim and all of them, like cheerleaders. Nah, the clowns at the Y said. There’s a

reason he working at Modell’s. He nice, but he ain’t Kobe nice.

When Kobe died they just sat around the hoop, lounging. Beans was quiet, but he was always quiet. Slim

asked how he was feeling.

“What you mean? I look sick to you.”

“I’m just asking,” Slim said. “Like if you good.”

“Man it’s not like I knew him. I sell his jersey for a cool 75, that’s the closest I’ll ever be to Kobe.”

Nobody was sure what to say, because Beans was right, like usual.

“I saw on Twitter people bringing up the rape stuff,” Ched said.

“Why they gotta bring that up now?” Diego said. “Let the man’s family grieve in peace.”

Loafer looked at Beans, as if gauging the distance between them before he spoke. “It’s all part of his legacy.

The good shit and the bad.”

“Ain’t nobody perfect,” Beans said. “Y’all find somebody who is y’all let me know.”


42

“Man Ched, look what you done started. You be following too many white people,” Slim said. They laughed,

even Ched.

“His daughter man, that’s what gets me,” K-Pop leaned back on his elbows. “You seen her clips? She was

nice. Like biting the neck of her jersey, tongue wagging and shit just like dad. You seen that? That shit hit

me.”

“It hit everybody, you ain’t different,” Diego said.

“Smush Parker probably the only one who ain’t mourning. Homie dancing around like it’s pay day right

now,” Slim said.

“Bruh. Chill,” Beans said.

“Yo it’s just a joke.”

“It’s disrespectful.”

“My bad Beans, you right.”

They went on like this for a while, swapping stories about watching Kobe’s 81, where they were for it, how

Loafer had once saved up enough to buy Kobe 9s by skipping lunch every day for three weeks and

pocketing the 2.50 his mom gave him for it, and none of them believed him because it didn’t look like

Loafer ever missed a meal in his life; how Diego’s girlfriend finally dumped him on the day Kobe dropped

61 at MSG, he only remembered because he was excitedly explaining to her the significance and with this

excruciatingly bored look on her face she said I can give you 61 reasons why I want to break up with you;

how Slim lost his virginity in a No. 8 jersey he refused to take off; how Ched still thought Bron was better

(he took whacks upside the head for that one); how K-Pop helped his dad learn English by watching Lakers

games, Mr. Kim’s grasp of the language to this day still very much married to the language of basketball,

which they all spoke, like gospel.

But Beans said nothing, he just listened to their bull shit, even though he was the only one they really

wanted to hear from. Finally he got up, went to the water fountain and they watched him lean over and

purse his lips as the stream hit them. He stood there for a while, hunched over, so long they weren’t sure

he was really drinking at all, like maybe the water was bouncing off his lips, a bank shot from the block.

When he came back he started talking like they’d been in the middle of a conversation.

“You know what fucks me up?” They saw his face but no they would not ask, no they would never ask if

those were tears or just the remnants of drinking water splashed into his eyes. “This shit people say about

him being larger than life. Fuck does that mean? He God?”

“Nah man, you know what it mean. He’s larger than life, like, you know…” Slim trailed off.

“I don’t. No I don’t fucking know and neither do you,” Beans said. “If he larger than life how come that

copter crashed out the air and burned quick like a match? How come he dead? Someone wanna tell me

how come?”

Beans grabbed one of the tattered YMCA balls that was lying around and punted it. It arced high in the air,

and six pairs of eyes watched its ascent until it reached the ceiling, where it got stuck between the beams.

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CHIUSANO 43

“I think there’s something wrong with us that we looked up to him, that we look up to anyone,” he said.

“But I know damn sure there’s something wrong with me. That motherfucker was my hero, I didn’t have

nobody else to call that.”

“Come on bro,” Ched said. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“There ain’t? Then how come when my pop went to jail I didn’t shed one single fucking tear, and today I

can’t stop crying.”

Loafer stood up, his knees creaking, and put one giant hand on Beans’ shoulder.

None of them said anything, although they all wanted to, they really did this time, but there were certain

things that could not be said, not today. Maybe down the road, maybe in a couple weeks, maybe when it

became OK for Slim to start yelling “Kobe” again, maybe when they were older and slower and their post

moves were weaker and the jump hook was their go-to move and they couldn’t touch backboard anymore

and they lived outside the paint, maybe they’d talk about it then. But not today.

When Kobe died, Loafer and Diego and Ched and K-Pop and Slim walked out of the Y together into the

night. Loafer who would graduate college and teach biology over at Midwood; Diego who would open a

donut truck called Double D’s that he would take on the road, across the country, settle down in LA; Ched

who would be dead from lung cancer before he saw his daughter graduate high school; K-Pop who would

work on Wall Street and marry his high school sweetheart and have four beautiful kids; Slim who would do

time and then bounce around and then do time again before finally turning his life around and coaching

AAU, where he taught only the most talented kids to play like his homie Beans.

When Kobe died, the five of them left Beans behind. Nobody knew what was next for him, what lay

waiting at the other end of the court, what tomorrow might bring. Beans sat there in the Y for a while,

alone, his back against the basket, looking up, waiting for that ball to drop from the heavens.


44

Grateful Dead Tickets

AVERY GREGURICH

after Ed Skoog

“...because they are kind and almost meaningless.”

i tell him that i like the one with the skeletons playing

baseball: one skeleton batter, one skelton catcher, and

one skeleton umpire, calling a strike. he’s brought in his grateful

dead ticket stubs to show me, spread them out on a table in

the breakroom of the grocery store. there’s thirty-seven years of

service in nametag time between us, but before he started out,

he got five wandering months in ‘92 to follow the dead

across the country in a nissan sentra , selling broke up

six-packs of beer to minors, grilled cheese sandwiches when

they had the dough, hemp bracelets, and sometimes whippits

when they wanted to make gas money. i only got to see the last of

the living ones on a school night when i was 17 and convinced

my boss to park the produce van outside the fabulous fox theatre

for four hours. that’s the thing about dead shows, about the

birth of children, and most baseball statistics, you have to

be there or they don’t mean anything. so he gives me the baseball

one representing may 19, 1992 at the cal expo amphitheatre and,

at shift’s end, i try to dive deep into the archive to hear the sound this

ticket holds, but the site says it is down for maintenance. the next day,

he brings me a panoramic shot of bob, bill, and jerry from one of

the shows, despite the tickets clearly requesting no flash cameras or

video equipment of any kind. i say, are you sure, i mean your kid might

want these some day, and he says don’t worry, i’ve got more, and so we go

back to the work and wait until it happens again: touch of grey will

play above the aisles and he will walk to find me, point up and stare

out past me to where he thinks the song is coming from.

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45

Dirty Work

AVERY GREGURICH

for Dennis Rodman

there’s never been another living in

the anthropocene like him. try it —

afraid to pay the fee of playing him

twice a year, jackson lit the candle

and locked the door. then the rest

got scared, the referees, david stern,

and a growing television audience all

tuned in for m.j., so they had to call

him “the worm.” there’s not many

highlight reels of Rodman that survive

because his game was really an act of

anti-matter. lock-down doesn’t start to

defend it. we talk about his rebounding

because we can count it. but Rodman

played the game ad infinitum, caused such

terrible trouble all around, mostly eliciting

poor offensive outings from the league’s

marquee scorers so that they started booking

the bulls to play sunday afternoon games. (no

wonder he later tried veils, nuclear diplomacy,

and leg-drops from the top rope.) the referees

had to kick him out of games just to generate

more scoring opportunities. they had to ship

shaq to l.a. to avoid playing him. now there’s no

endorsements for dennis, and i have to wonder

how everything might have been different if

dennis had been given the ‘96 Finals MVP

he deserved? and i mean everything, too. maybe

no ‘98 NBA lockout leaving no gaps in ABC’s

t.v. programming, meaning no celebrity mole,

no survivor, and maybe if we would have

gotten lucky, no apprentice. instead they

hollywood ten’d him all the way into being

commissioner of the lingerie football league.


46 GREGURICH

see we were taught to hate him just because

rodman had shown us what freedom could

be like here, in this the best of all possible

worlds.

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47

Goodfellas

MORGAN CHRISTIE

It was during a film class in my teens that I first watched Goodfellas. It was like nothing else I’d seen. Having

studied the fundamentals of cinematography throughout the year, watching it was like a snapshot of what

an exquisitely captured piece of art was supposed to be. Particular frames used to elevate the narrative

arc, like Henry running out of the fire but the image illustrating a run towards it; optics and lighting that

blur the audience's perception along with our protagonists; and needless to say, the infamous long shot

that recrafted our understanding of film, tracking, and the possibilities that could be established in the

visual telling of a story.

Outside of the literal art of the film, the characterizations and plotline were encapsulating and often

hypnotic. Henry Hill’s early innocence and blind ambition, Tommy Devito’s fiery wit and headstrong

sensibilities, and Jimmy Conway’s cunning, brilliance, and utter ruthlessness. Not to mention the ingrained

distrust and displeasure with law enforcement that parallel my own culture; I felt connected to the story,

not realizing that that feeling was a mild reality. This glamourization shifted over time as the misogyny,

racism, homophobia, violence, and slew of other ‘isms’ embedded in the film and culture became clear to

me, but what Scorsese captured was still one of the most resonating sequences to behold. It wasn’t until

nearly a decade later that I learned of my strange, but irrefutable, connection to these men and this

lifestyle I’d fallen in enamoration with.

I was catching up with my father while he was at an annual basketball tournament his team had

frequented since my childhood. He was playing in the fifty and fifty-five division that year, quite a few of

his teammates were, unnecessarily wearing themselves thin. While listening to his recent updates and

strained inability to properly stretch his hamstring without my help, I heard a teammate jest with him, “No

frowning, you have to smile for the cameras.” My father laughed and I inquired as to what camera was

being referred to. He told me there was a documentary film crew following Jim, one of his teammates and

buddies I’d come to know over the course of life, for a 30 for 30 they were producing.

I sat up so fast I almost fumbled my phone, “30 for 30?”

In what was one of my favorite series, it still is. Curiosity spiked regarding Jim and the eventual

documentary I would watch. I asked my father what, if anything, he knew about the episode. He told me


48

there was only one thing he knew about Jim’s past that seemed like a point of interest for such a big

feature. He wasn’t wrong.

Playing for the Mob aired in 2014 and chronicled the illustrious ‘79 season point shaving scheme at Boston

College. The case ultimately tied Jimmy Burke to a conviction, a task the Federal Bureau of Investigations

had a time with for some years following his prior arrest. With the involvement of Henry Hill and various

others, Jim had become intertwined in a scandal it wouldn’t be fair to call abnormal. Point shaving,

specifically at the college level, is no unheard of phenomena, the ‘51 CCNY and ‘94 Arizona State

documentaries sticking out in my mind. There are others, and likely countless more that simply haven’t

been exposed. When you really think of it, it’s not a difficult sell, wads of cash fanned around the faces of

neck deep in sweat teenagers, or close to teens, being told they could make money for winning at the

sport they loved, within a couple of points.

Then, that pigeonholed dialogue begins that anyone who’s played a sport has heard too many times; fair

play and sportsmanship and camaraderie and trust and every other blanketed expectation of athletes,

regardless of the level or point in their career. These aren’t bad principles to instill in anyone, of course,

but can easily be doused when that dialogue widens its reach. Players are often vilified and disgraced by

the organizations and fans that held them so high on their pillars, they almost didn’t seem human

anymore. Almost. I watched the documentary in awe of the light I was seeing a baller I’d known for years

in, not the spitty guard whose court awareness equated to ease and control on the floor, but a guard’s

dangerous, irresponsible, and underthought fall from grace.

One of the few consistencies I’ve gathered from college basketball players and their careers is the

lackluster experience a large majority share in. While their educations are being paid for, a momentous

benefit, a lot of these athletes live far from cozy college lives. I remember my father telling me about his

college career; the poverty, hunger, and inaccessibility to essential resources like shoes and other

basketball gear outside of uniform specifics. My mother used to send him a few dollars every month after

she graduated and he had one more year, just for the basics, I’m talking toothpaste and deodorant basics.

These stories were mirrored in uncles, teammates, and others I knew that played at the same level, they

had virtually the same stories. I can’t speak to the top tier division I schools or even the league shoe-ins,

but the everyday college athlete wasn’t living in luxury, some of them were barely getting by. Watching a

multi-million dollar industry you and a few handfuls of others were at the center of, literally profit off of

your back, make bank and shell out hundreds of thousands to the staff and administration around you,

when you couldn’t even afford a pizza some nights; it might be enough to consider the inconsiderable.

While we can’t excuse these poor decisions that not all athletes choose to make, taking a closer look at the

institutions and their output shed some light on a few realities. Division I NCAA men’s basketball was

recently quoted at a rough billion dollar revenue point including regular season, playoff, and March

Madness televised events. Those numbers have grown since my father’s and Jim’s day, but it’s enough to

say, none of these players should have been begging for the essentials. When we begin preaching a

rhetoric surrounding the responsibilities of these players, to their teams and the sport they play, we can’t

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CHRISTIE 49

forget to highlight the responsibilities of institutions to uphold the same candor and fair treatment to kids

they demand it from.

I don’t speak for every athlete, but know that the conditions and way of life many of these players lived by

would have made a lot of them easy marks. My father for instance, and his affinity for horse races and pick

3s, I don’t imagine would have required that much tooth pulling to pocket a few extra bucks when he was

going to bed hungry after away games because cheeseburgers hurt his stomach and that’s all they were

offered. Or Jim, and whatever reality he faced when Henry approached him; the way the proposition was

framed, like Jim having to dribble the ball out instead of taking another shot at the end of the game; the

optics around the morality of clothing yourself when no one else would; or the longshot, tracking the years

of sweat and exasperation you’d given to a organization that you might be beginning to understand cared

more about profit margins than you.

Still, I couldn’t believe the connection. Had my father known a bit more about my taste in movies, I imagine

I would have known about Jim, Boston College, Henry Hill, and Jimmy Burke around the same time I

watched the film on repeat. Maybe he wouldn’t have wanted me to know though, maybe the same

tarnished undertone plagued my father that did so many others and he wouldn’t have wanted to expose

me to such an ugly reality, the opposite of sportsmanship and authenticity in the game he taught me to

love. Or maybe he would’ve told me because he knew how it felt to fight for something your entire life,

without enough pay off, without enough support, without enough food.

We got off the phone and I pictured his rickety body making its way to the court, most of his teammates,

still wearing their college numbers. I picture him and Jim touching hands before the game like they all

always would, and not saying much to each other about the cameras and crew, because they understood,

because they wondered. And I don’t think that makes any of them bad guys, not at all, they were

goodfellas, and once some thirty years before, they also weren't too far off, from just being kids.


50

A Non-Starter

RUSSELL NICHOLS

Joseph was the first brother to get punked for his jacket. But with respect to spiritual experiences, even

the great interpreter of dreams couldn’t see legendary wide receiver Jerry Rice. So when Putty and his

boys rolled up on me in my fresh-off-the-rack 49ers Starter Jacket, I braced myself for a fate worse than

the pit.

“I like that coat,” Putty said, already reaching to check the tag. It was a gift from moms for my tenth

birthday—maybe I should’ve wished to see eleven. “Too bad it ain’t real.”

His boys laughed. And if I was using my double-digit brain instead of the buggy old model, I would’ve

shrugged and moved on. But I was proud to say my 49ers Starter was 100% official.

“Word?” Putty said, rubbing his peach fuzz. “Let me try it on.”

Time froze. Nobody moved an inch, the line of scrimmage being a crack in the sidewalk. Putty had a solid

twenty pounds plus puberty on me with a savage line ready to snap. My skinny ass was in illegal formation,

one play away from a turnover-on-getting-beat-down. WWJD? Jerry was skinny. Jerry was fast. Jerry had

hands. All I had to do was fake a pullover, catch Putty off guard with a hook, then scramble like I never

scrambled. I saw the draw play in my head. Seven x’s like chalky white spiders chasing down little o me.

And I could …

Go …

All …

The …

Nope.

Didn’t even reach the next block before I got tackled, the subsequent roughness very unnecessary. No

Hail Mary could save me. And in those half-conscious seconds, I had a dream I was in the NFL, but the

offensive coordinator said I had to play dead because my freedom (femur?) was too injured. Whatever

that means.

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51

Pitching & Politics

M.A.H. HINTON

in baseball a pitch

thrown too far inside

is an invitation

to a fight

thrown just right

it is a merely a reminder

to quit crowding the plate

inches matter

as does intent

it is the same in Truth

a lie thrown out to deceive the masses

is an invitation

to a fight

thrown in ignorance

it is merely another reminder

to start paying attention


52

The Barbecue

LYDIA KLISMITH HANSEN

The barbecue was just getting started, and Dad was already grilling. Cass had decided she was a

vegetarian last week. She had been holding her baby brother when she realized that he was made out of

meat.

“Can you help with my pinkie toes?” Betsy asked. She had forgotten her allergy medication, so her voice

was thick and phlegmy, her eyes red like she’d been crying.

“Just make sure that there’s only a little bit of paint on the brush.” Cass fanned at her own toes—acid

green.

“School starts in three weeks,” Betsy said, blobbing red polish on her pinkie toes.

“I know.”

“We’re going to be high schoolers.”

“Shut up,” Cass said.

“It’s gonna be awesome.”

“It’s going to suck.” Cass wished for the millionth time Jacquelyn wasn’t visiting her stupid grandma. Then

Cass could’ve invited Jacquelyn instead of Betsy. Betsy might have been fat and boring but the alternative

was fat, boring adults.

“Can we get some food?” Betsy asked.

They went downstairs.

“Cassidy Ann Clements,” Mom said. She had put on her makeup and dress, but her shoes were in her right

hand. She gestured with the red pumps. “You go upstairs and put on that yellow dress. I didn’t pay sixty

dollars for it to sit in your closet.” Her face was pinkening under her liquid foundation.

Cass turned around and went back upstairs and folded herself into the linen dress that made her feel like

an Easter duckling. Betsy followed her. Cass felt like there was an invisible leash connecting them

together.

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53

Cass stopped and spun in a slow circle in front of Mom. “Good,” Mom said, and she smiled, the foundation

sinking into the creases she was trying to cover. “You too Betsy. Spin,” she said. She was obeyed. “Your

leggings don’t match but that’s okay. Before you go, Cassidy, get your brother into his outfit and take him

out with you.”

They went to the nursery. The thick curtains were closed but there were three nightlights. Cass peered

into the narrow gap between the crib and the wall. She’d hid her baseball bat there, in case there was an

intruder. Someone had broken the neighbor’s windows.

The baby was asleep. His head was lumpy like a lemon. She imagined his brains were little seeds under a

thick rind of squishy bone. He was almost one-and-a-half. His name was Chevalier, but Cass usually called

him the baby.

“Where’s my little boy?” Dad popped his head into the room and flicked on the light, the baldness of his

skull gleaming under his comb over. The baby squeaked.

“You’re just in time,” Cass said, and she handed him the outfit Mom had laid out.

“Thanks, sweetie. Hi Betsy, how are your parents?”

“They’re good. They’re sorry they couldn’t come.”

“Aw, it’s okay.” Dad spoke slow and ponderous. If he’d been an animal, Cass thought, he would be an

elephant. Mom would be a flamingo. “I just made some dates wrapped in bacon. You two should go try

them.”

Cass and Betsy went outside. Dozens of people were corralled in a ring of folding tables. The grill in the

corner produced piles of meat, manned by one of Dad’s accountant friends in a checkered button-down

shirt.

“I’m going to get some food,” Betsy said.

“Okay.”

Betsy didn’t move. “Are you coming?”

“I’m not hungry. Go get your food. I’ll be right here.”

Betsy slowly stretched the invisible leash between them. Cass imagined it snapping like the thick wire of a

bridge, whipping through the crowd.

“Hey there, Cassidy.” She looked up to see Mitch, the guy who lived two doors down. He was holding a

beer. He didn’t have any kids; he had a boat. He was the neighbor who had his windows smashed. Nothing

had been stolen. Cass smirked.

“Hello.”

“Gone swimming yet this summer?”

“A couple times.”


54

“Have I taken your family out on my boat yet?” he asked. He was wearing sunglasses like he was a

racecar driver.

Cass shook her head.

“I’ll have to take you and your mom out sometime. It’s a lotta fun.” His sunglasses barely hid the tan line he

had from always wearing sunglasses. His green polo was a little too small for him, tight around the muscle

of his arms and his round little potbelly.

“So what are you thinking about?” he asked, his big smile reaching up to his glasses.

“Meat,” Cass said, deciding to not lie.

“And why’s that?”

“Everyone is made of meat.”

He frowned but said, “Yup. We’re all animals.”

“Not me.”

He cleared his throat. “Uh,” he took a sip of his beer. “What are you, then?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, looking at her own reflection in his sunglasses. She’d braided her hair that

morning, but a halo of frizz escaped in the humidity. She made a face at her reflection and didn’t answer

him.

Betsy came back with a paper plate covered in saucy ribs. Cass tried not to look at it. The white edge of the

bones made her aware of the texture of her teeth.

“Well,” Mitch said, “you two girls have fun.” He smiled at Cass and then walked away.

“He smells weird,” Betsy said.

“You’re weird to notice.”

Betsy made a sour face at Cass, biting into the ribs and staring at her until Cass looked away, holing her

arms away from her body so she couldn’t feel her own ribs.

Someone had moved the tables to break the corral of seating. A man with a tacky looking spray-tan

started a game of bocce ball. Most of the ladies had clustered themselves around the baby or were

clumped together like wrapped bouquets. It was the last of the summer parties, and most of the women

were wearing dresses that made Cass’s pleated yellow dress seem dull. Mitch was in the clump, a halfhead

taller than the women.

Cass watched as Mom handed the baby to one of the other women. She started talking with Mitch and she

did her party laugh: her head tipped back while her jaw stayed frozen. Mitch put a hand at her back as he

laughed with her. Dad’s grill was in the sun and he was sweating so much that his comb over was beginning

to melt into his forehead. His brown moustache was damp.

“Let’s get some popsicles,” Cass said.

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HANSEN 55

Betsy followed her to the kitchen, her plate folding like a taco around the ribs. They ate in the kitchen and

then went into the living room to play a videogame. Betsy played Cass’s old baseball game on easy.

“Hey there, ladies,” Mitch said. He was holding a beer. He sat down next to Cass with a thump. “So,

who’s winning?”

“I am,” Cass said. She had the top three high scores. Dad had the fourth and fifth.

“You get to play any time you want to,” Betsy said. “This is only the second time I’ve ever played this

game.”

“Complaints are just excuses for losers,” Cass said, quoting their baseball coach.

Mitch laughed.

Betsy, instead of hunching her shoulders and ignoring the comment like Cass had expected her to, set

down the controller and stood, looking over at Cass. Betsy was trying to glare, but her face was just too

round, her eyes too brown, her hair too curly. She’d always be a cherub. Still—she was at least trying, and

Cass respected that.

“I’m going to get a freezie,” Betsy said, and she left, accidentally-on-purpose kicking the controller

across the floor as she went. Not bad, Cass thought.

“So,” Mitch said, “Do you still play softball?”

“Baseball.”

“Are they different?”

“Softball uses a softball,” Cass said, talking like she would to the baby: slow and clear. The baby

wasn’t stupid but he had a lot to learn. “Baseball uses a baseball.”

Mitch nodded, and his sunglasses slipped down. He took another drink of his beer. His eyes were green

and his lashes were lighter than the brown hair on his head. Some of the wrinkles in his face were tannedin.

The creases were pale like he’d spent hours smiling at the sun—probably driving his boat around. He

pushed up the lenses.

“How’s it going in here, Cassidy?” Mom asked, leaning against the doorway that led to the kitchen.

One of her bra straps had slipped down, and draped over her arm. She fixed it with a snap. “Oh, hi there

Mitch.”

“Hi, Sara. How’s it going?”

“Positively wonderful. Have I given you a tour of the house yet?”

“Not lately.”

“Come on, let me show you upstairs.” Mom and Mitch held eye contact as he stood up and moved to her. As

they walked upstairs, Mitch touched Mom’s calf, squeezing the muscle below the back of her knee like it

was a stress ball. Mom giggled.

…


56

The barbecue went into the evening. People trickled in while others trickled out. Cass didn’t understand

how her parents had so many friends. They were all so boring. When it was dark, there was a bonfire. Cass

and Betsy were looking for marshmallows in the kitchen when Mitch and Mom walked in, stumbling and

laughing. Mom had spilled some wine on her dress but didn’t seem to care.

“Hey girls, it’s eight o’ clock. Time for bed.” She put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder as she tried to take off her

red pumps. When the girls didn’t move right away she looked at them with her Mom Stare. Her hair

seemed to prickle up. Her makeup was smudged, which altered the outline of her face and broke up her

features, so there was no expression to read outside of her wide-set blue eyes. The girls went upstairs and

got ready for bed.

“It’s been a really fun day,” Betsy said. Cass was certain that was a lie, and she wasn’t sure if she should like

or dislike Betsy for it. Dislike for lying. Like because she knew that lying took practice to get any good at,

which was admirable.

“Yeah,” Cass said, lying right back at her.

“Tomorrow morning, before my parents come to pick me up,” Betsy said tentatively, looking at her

toes as she worked them into the thick white carpet. “Do you think we could play catch in the field? I

brought my mitt.

“That sounds awesome,” Cass said, and meant it. She missed playing baseball, and she could tell

that Betsy missed it too. They said goodnight.

Cass went to her bedroom but did not go to bed. She waited for a half hour and then went downstairs.

Adults with drinks in their hands were clogging up the kitchen, but she weaved through them and took

Dad’s keys off the hook by the microwave. She put them in her pocket and then went to the nursery. The

baby was asleep.

She slid her hand into the gap between the crib and the wall, doing her best to lift the bat without touching

the sides, like she was playing Operation. She tickled Chevalier’s toes. He chortled in his sleep. Cass had

been there when he was born; it had been gross, but he was turning out okay so far.

She walked out the front door. Nobody stopped her.

Cass went to one of the cars parked in the cul-de-sack. She picked a red one that was next to the driveway

and tried to make a giant heart on the hood using the keys. It was more difficult to control than she had

expected, so it was a little lopsided. She wrote SC & M in the heart. She couldn’t remember Mitch’s last

name. She wasn’t sure what else to do. After a moment of consideration, she dropped the keys down the

storm drain. She picked up the baseball bat from where she had set it against the wheel of the car.

“Hey there, kiddo.”

Her shoulders jumped up. Mitch was walking down the driveway with a cigarette hanging off of his lips

and a beer in his hand. She felt adrenaline pinching at her veins. Mitch was smiling all the way up to his

THE UNDER REVIEW

HANSEN 57

sunglasses again. The lamp post at the end of the driveway cast a yellowish light, like they were in silty

water; the glass orb was a quarter of the way filled with dead bugs.

“What are you up to?” He saw the keyed car. His smile pulled outwards like invisible hands pinched

his cheeks. There was no wind, and the cigarette smoke hovered around him. “Do you know whose car

that is?”

Cass shook her head. She set the baseball bat on her shoulder.

“Me either,” he said, and he took a breath through his cigarette. “Were you the kid who broke my

windows?”

Cass didn’t respond.

“Just like your mother. Crazy little lady.” The cigarette still in the corner of his mouth, he took a sip

of his beer. Dad had smoked once. Mom made him stop.

It started in her right foot as a buildup of pressure between her toes and the pavement. In one easy

motion, that pressure travelled from her foot, to her knee, to her hips, to her spine, to her shoulders, and

to her arms, growing exponentially at each new twist. The baseball bat jumped off of her shoulder and into

Mitch’s ribs. Through the bat, she was surprised by how much she felt his ribs flex, and the feeling of air

being forced out of him. The bat naturally bounced back, and she rested it on her shoulder. She felt as light

and beautiful as her aluminum bat.

She hadn’t felt so beautiful since the last game of the season, last year. The ball seemed to come at her in

slow motion, her bat already moving while her mind stayed in one place, the bat connecting explosively,

the ping of the aluminum singing its strike, the ball jerking away like an invisible string yanked it up and

out, out of the field and over the trees. Mom, in the bleachers, was screaming “That’s my girl!” stomping

her feet, her hands punching the air with the same uncontrolled energy of Chevalier getting a handful of

someone’s hair. “That’s my girl!” she shouted, Dad’s arms around her shoulders, embarrassed by her

outburst, but smiling like the first time he held Chevalier, his eyebrows contracting in a frown while his

mouth smiled, a tense contradiction of joy and fear, disbelief that he should be so lucky. Cass took her

victory lap, breathing thanks for her muscles and bones and blood. It was the only thing that was truly

hers, her only unarguable power.

She breathed deeply and tossed her hair of out her eyes. Mitch was doubled over, his mouth making one

large O of shock. His glasses had fallen off of his face but he still held on to his beer and cigarette. He fell

back into a sitting position. His breathing was shallow and his face had turned white. She had never seen

anyone so pale before. In the harsh yellow light, all the little bumps and divots of his face stood out, like

craters on the moon.

Cass pointed the bat at his nose. “You only have friends because you have a boat,” she said. He gaped at

her.


58 HANSEN

She walked back into the house and replaced the bat in the nursery. Chevalier whined and she had to

comfort him before she could leave. She picked him up. He was heavier every day even though he only ate

pureed veggies. Dad startled her by walking into the nursery.

“How is he? I came to check,” he said. Cass shrugged and set him back in the crib. “Is Mitch okay?”

She froze. His tone was soft but that could have been to avoid waking up the baby.

“I saw you were talking to him,” Dad said, “and then he walked home just a few minutes ago, so I was

wondering. Mom wanted to play a videogame with him.” He stood beside her and checked to make sure

Chevalier’s clothing snaps were all secured.

“Chevy Chevy,” he murmured while he checked. “Chevy Chevy fresh spaghetti.”

“He said he was tired.”

“What were you doing outside anyways?”

“I couldn’t sleep. You guys are too loud.”

“Aw, I’m sorry sweetie. People will be leaving pretty soon, and it’ll quiet down. Good thing you

don’t have school tomorrow.” He put a hand on her shoulder and guided her out. “Go back to bed, honey.”

Cass went to bed and only relaxed after she heard the pitch of the party dwindle away. She heard Mom

and Dad go to bed and heard Betsy floundering around in the guest bed, trying to get comfortable on the

old mattress. Cass could feel her bones lengthening, her muscle and tendons stretching across their

connections, her body struggling to contain her.

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59

Icarus

RODRIGO SANCHEZ-CHAVARRIA

When I was 9,

I remember playing soccer

With a plastic black and white ball.

In a dirt field we called playground

Where nothing seem to grow except dreams

Where only love was spoken in coordinated footwork.

Which glued the world to our feet

We directed the comet where to go

To gracefully follow the phases of the moon, stars,

Stitching constellations of our dreams into the seams of the world glued to our feet.

We jumped over broken glass left at parks

Where people sang out their heart breaks into colored glass megaphones

With hopes that the world would hear them.

We couldn’t imagine hopes being imprisoned in bottles

So we broke them to let them breathe

Used the shards to make outlines of the battlefield.

Because we battled our limits and nightmares.

Every game was an odyssey and each player

Their own Icarus, trying each time to surpass the inconceivable.

We dribbled

Ran and felt at peace with the wind at our backs

Displacing every fear we have had up to that point.

Nothing mattered more than to drive the ball to the back of an invisible net.


60 SANCHEZ-CHAVARRIA

To raise your hands towards the sun

Bellowing the most celestial of songs

As tribute to a child's game.

The world forgets for one second

The things that bring us pain

To feel this immensely wave of joy.

Nothing mattered at that moment.

Nothing mattered,

Nothing.

That is futbol to me.

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61

Perfect Spiral

MICHAEL METIVIER

Always, at whoever’s house, teeth marks:

a chunk chewed from the stitches

or the side, the smooth N or F

we would worry with our fingers

before testing our strength against

fall’s yawning acreage, a Hail Mary

every down. Sometimes waterlogged

from a rain barrel or above-ground pool,

often scrawled with permanent marker

across the seam (nickname, lightning).

Never did we learn what it stood for:

NON-EXPANDING RECREATIONAL FOAM,

though it had our love and was on our tongues

when the company expanded to bows

and dart guns. Enlist, engage, enforce

went one ad, and those of us who didn’t

make the team knew the assignment,

learned we could still launch missiles

with our arms, could even take bites

out of the bullets with no harm done.


62

On the Privilege of Losing: Notes of a Detroit Lions

Fan

RILEY WINCHESTER

Consider the synonyms of loser, that two-syllable acidic stain on the tongue that we’re told is a label to

avoid: also-ran, underdog, deadbeat, defeated, dud, failure, flop, has-been, disadvantaged, down-andouter,

flunked, underprivileged.

#

I won’t bore you with anecdotes on the myriad little losses I’ve experienced in my life—spelling bees,

baseball tournaments, hands of blackjack, games of darts, etc.—but rather I’ll cut to the heart of the matter

and the impetus of this essay. I am a Detroit Lions fan. I’m talking more than just a flip-on-the-game-rightquick-oh-they’re-losing-guess-I’ll-turn-it-off-and-try-again-next-Sunday

fan. I am, admittedly, too

emotionally and temporally invested in a professional football team that continues to find new ways to

lose.

Fortunately, I was born into the habit of losing. Never in my time as a Lions fan have I ever been deceived

by the illusion of consistent winning. In my first year on this earth, and my first season as a de facto Lions

fan—1997—the Lions went 9-7 and made the playoffs. Not bad. But then they of course lost in the Wild

Card round. After that 1997 playoff run, the losses came and they’ve yet to show any sign of leaving.

5-11. 8-8. 9-7. 2-14. 3-13. 5-11. 6-10. 5-11. 3-13. 7-9. And then the infamous 0-16 2008 season. I’ll stop

listing season records here. I think you get the point.

It was losing that brought the Lions to Detroit, but it wasn’t football games they lost.

Founded in 1928, the Portsmouth Spartans were a successful football team. In their short professional

tenure, they held a record of 28-16-7. The Spartans’ problem, however, was off the field. Timing. The

Spartans were founded shortly before Black Tuesday and the start of the Great Depression that left

America mired in a ten-year economic abyss. Undoubtedly an inauspicious time to start a professional

football team in southern Ohio.

#

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63

Portsmouth, Ohio, was a small town. Like most of America, Portsmouth residents were harshly affected by

the Depression, and the town’s football team felt the effects. Fans loved and supported the Spartans,

there was no doubt about that, but they couldn’t afford tickets to the games. Star running back Dutch

Clark said about the fans, “Hell, we’d get 4,000 or 5,000 people out to watch practice and at game time

we’d be lucky if we had 2,000.”

As a result, the team went deeper into debt as the Depression worsened in the early 1930s. The Spartans’

financial situation became so bleak that players were forced to take shares of stock in the team in lieu of

their usual salary. There was no money, not for the players, coaches, or front office. A change needed to be

made. Enter George A. Richards.

Richards, owner of the Detroit radio station WJR, bought the Portsmouth Spartans for a price reported to

have been between $15,000 and $16,500. The new owner wasted no time in his revamping of the team.

He moved the Spartans to Detroit, Michigan, and renamed them the Lions, with the goal of building the

“king of the NFL.” The Lions played their first game in 1934, and they’ve remained in Detroit ever since.

Let’s take history’s most humiliating losses and examine them.

Crassus led 43,000 legionnaires in an attack on the Parthian Empire. The marauding legionnaires were

heavily fatigued and famished, but Crassus ordered them to continue their campaign in an attempt to

catch the Parthians off-guard in Mesopotamia. Crassus and his crew of 43,000 were subsequently met

with a bulwark of Parthian horse archers and armed horsemen. Drowning in arrows, the Roman army

scattered and fled for their lives. Many were captured and killed in the fracas, including Crassus who was

beheaded by his captors.

#

But how does this loss compare to leading 20-17 in the fourth quarter of a playoff game against the Dallas

Cowboys only for Cowboys linebacker Anthony Hitchens to get away with an egregious pass interference

on Brandon Pettigrew—the flag was thrown, then picked up!—and don’t forget Dez Bryant running onto

the field without a helmet on—also not penalized—and the culmination of it all being a late-game Tony

Romo touchdown pass to Terrance Williams and a 24-20 loss for the Lions, ultimately ending their season

in appropriate hapless fashion.

In 1939, Stalin thought he could bully his smaller neighbor Finland. He sent the Red Army into an

unforgiving Finnish winter with a surplus of manpower and firepower. But it didn’t matter what the

Soviets brought with them. The Finnish Army was ready. Russian troops were systematically sniped as

they trudged through the snow on their way to meet their Finnish foes. These casualties, however, only

emboldened Stalin. He ordered more troops to Finland, and they were promptly shot and killed. By the

end, the Red Army suffered three times as many casualties as Finland.

But how does this loss compare to K.J. Wright’s blatant and unpenalized breaking of NFL rule 12.1.8—A

player may not bat or punch: (a) a loose ball (in field of play) toward opponent's goal line; (b) a loose ball (that has

touched the ground) in any direction, if it is in either end zone; (c) a backward pass in flight may not be batted


64

forward by an offensive player—as he swatted the football out of the back of the end zone to stultify a late

fourth quarter drive by the Lions, ultimately putting a bow on a 13-10 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on

Monday Night Football.

And how could any of these losses compare to the most emblematic loss in recent Detroit Lions history:

the Miracle in Motown. The Lions were up 23-21 on the Packers when Aaron Rodgers was stuffed into the

Ford Field turf as time expired, therefore solidifying a Lions victory. But then the flag came. A phantom

facemask call on Devon Taylor gave Aaron Rodgers and the Packers fifteen yards and a free play. Starting

on the Packers’ thirty-nine-yard line, Rodgers took the snap, stepped back, let his receivers air out,

scrambled from defenders, and heaved the ball to the end zone. The ball floated in the air, high enough to

almost hit the rafters, and it landed in the hands of Packers tight end Richard Rodgers II for a Green Bay

touchdown, ultimately sealing a 27-23 Lions loss. Announcer Jim Nantz called it “Miracle in Motown.” It

won the award for Best Play at the 2016 ESPY Awards. It is still the longest game-winning Hail Mary play

in NFL history.

Coincidentally, all three of these aforementioned Lions’ losses happened in the calendar year 2015. Just

another year for the Detroit Lions and their fans. Just another year of desensitized and blasé losing.

#

Sports fans especially don’t take well to losing. Go to YouTube and search “sports fan meltdown” and you’ll

get pages and pages of major meltdowns filmed in portrait mode in living rooms across the world. The top

search result is a video titled “NFL Angry Fans Compilation,” uploaded by user Kilo Goodwin. It has over

1.6 million views. In the video, fans of six different NFL teams are seen having meltdowns after big losses.

And with the exception of the Cleveland Browns, all the teams featured have had relative success

recently. Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos, San Francisco 49ers, Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Carolina

Panthers.

It’s as if success—winning—heightens the fall and increases the pain. The fall doesn’t hurt so bad when it’s

only a couple of inches, as any experienced loser would know. The invisible culprit behind all these

meltdowns, it seems, is the misguided belief in the certitude of victory—something that can only occur

after a habit of winning more than losing has been established.

Perhaps the most notorious instance of a fan meltdown is Harvey Updyke. Updyke was a lifelong Alabama

Crimson Tide Fan who, after an Alabama loss to Auburn in the 2010 Iron Bowl, took matters into his own

destructive hands. He drove thirty miles to Toomer’s Corner, a historic landmark on Auburn’s campus, and

poisoned the two iconic oak trees with Spike 80DF herbicide. Updyke felt no remorse, and he even went

as far as calling into a sports radio talk show to gloat about the act. When asked by host Paul Finebaum if it

was a crime to poison a tree, Updyke said, “Do you think I care?” He ended his call with, “Roll damn Tide!”

and shortly after the trees died.

Rivalries can play a role in these behaviors, sure, but the Lions are (allegedly) rivals with the Green Bay

Packers, and one would be hard-pressed to see anything remotely close to this behavior after the Lions

receive their two losses from the Packers each year.

THE UNDER REVIEW

WINCHESTER 65

Take the previously mentioned Miracle in Motown. There’s plenty of YouTube videos showing the live

reaction from the stands in Ford Field. Packers fans raucously cheer and make a scene. Lions fans silently

march out of the stadium, stoically distant from a meltdown, desensitized to it all. Nobody wearing

Honolulu blue felt deceived or shorted. They got what they paid for when they were born into the

inculcated cycle of losing that is being a Detroit Lions fan.

It happens almost every sports season, but it remains hilarious to watch from an unempathetic

perspective. Good teams go bad. Winners lose. As I write this, two perennial winners are experiencing

“failing” seasons in the NFL. The New England Patriots are 3-4 and the Pittsburgh Steelers are 3-3. Both

teams have six Super Bowl titles, their fans have become accustomed to winning, and now the sky is

falling.

To be .500 would be a hallucination. To even have a win would be surreal (Lions are 0-7 as I write this). Yet

I don’t need a winning record or a win, I’ve realized. A win is as futile as the penny I get back in change at

the gas station. It will do nothing; I’ll eventually forget about it. And the Lions have developed a habit of

forcing their fans to give that win-penny back with late-game blunders, blown calls, and all the other

vagaries of being a Lions fan.

Consider the synonyms of Lions fan, that three-syllable acidic stain on the tongue that we’re told is a label

to avoid: also-ran, underdog, deadbeat, defeated, dud, failure, flop, has-been, disadvantaged, down-andouter,

flunked, loser.

#

We are losers, and we are better people for it. We have no illusions of supremacy or entitlement. We take

what is thrown at us and we handle it with the grace and solemnity of a Stoic. We don’t whine or whimper.

We don’t smash televisions or poison nature. We don’t even raise our voices. We simply move on having

accepted defeat, as we’ve had the privilege of experiencing it so often, and we go on with our lives.

Beck says in his 1994 single “Loser,” “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?” But I don’t think us losers

can be killed. Like Achilles, we’ve been dipped in a river of immortality. Our river flows of shortcomings

and failures, and our immortality is expectational. Our heel, and the only way we can succumb to

expectational death, is the deception of winning. So we keep losing, and we remain impervious.


66

An Erasure Fable Found in Defense of Consumer

Rights

ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO

(From Mets General Manager Sandy Alderman’s press release addressing his team’s players celebrating by

pointing their thumbs down as a response to fan jeering)

In a post-game press conference today, Javy Báez stated that his “thumbs down” gesture during the game

was a message to fans who recently have booed him and other players for poor performance. These

comments, and any gestures by him or other players with a similar intent, are totally unacceptable and will

not be tolerated.

Mets fans are understandably frustrated over the team’s recent performance. The players and the

organization are equally frustrated, but fans at Citi Field have every right to express their own

disappointment. Booing is every fan’s right.

The Mets will not tolerate any player gesture that is unprofessional in its meaning or is directed in a

negative way toward our fans. I will be meeting with our players and staff to convey this message directly.

MORAL: Mets fans are loyal, passionate, knowledgeable and more than willing to express themselves. We

love them for every one of these qualities.

THE UNDER REVIEW

67

Photograph: Little League Practice

KATHRYN KYSAR

We stand in the gloom of April:

pearls of ice, strands of snow,

entire necklaces dipped in heaven’s

scorn. It singes when you swing

the bat, our feet soaked by the yellow

straw-like spongy grass. You’re ahead

of me, not behind. The moist spring

air smells of dirt, the dust-colored

sky edged with darkening blue.

It’s chilling, but not winter, the ground

solid but wet, the forest distant, your

breath, close by. You have no words.

I memorize your body’s position,

the placement of your hands, your

thoughts swept away like rainwater.

There is no one else in this picture.

You’re alone, waiting for the ball.


68

Summer Swimmer

JESSIE WALKER

July 31, 2005, was the first day I believed I could become an Olympic swimmer. I was competing for the

Meadowbrook Tomatoes in the 11-12 age group at the Central Maryland Swim League (CMSL)

Championships, the big season finale for summer swim teams. And for the 100 I.M., I had to race against

my former teammate, the evil Amy Halligan, a bulldog of a girl whose mouth was fixed in a permanent

grimace. She was a professional at spinning her words to make me feel awful in my already awkward skin.

But today, enough was enough. I had never wanted to beat someone this badly.

When we stepped up to the starting blocks, I stared at Amy and thought about all the nasty things she’d

said. My nose was too big for my face. My ears were oversized and full of wax. My thick black eyebrows

didn’t match my dirty blonde hair. When the starter pressed the buzzer and we dove in, I tore through the

water. I flew through a lap of butterfly, on to a lap of backstroke, then to breaststroke, and finished with

freestyle. On the final lap, I put my head down and didn’t take a breath while I cruised towards the finish.

When I slammed my hand onto the wall, I looked over to Amy’s lane. No one was there. Several seconds

later, she touched the wall and snarled in my direction. I extended my hand to offer a handshake, knowing

she’d hate every moment. When I hopped out of the water and asked for my time, the timer flashed me a

stopwatch that read 1:08.84. My coach met me beside the pool, beaming with the news—I’d broken a

longstanding league record. Craziest of all, the record had belonged to an Olympian.

After that race, a flip switched. If I could break an Olympian’s record, then why couldn’t I be an Olympian

myself? I wanted to bottle up the mixture of power and pride that I’d felt beating Amy and breaking that

record. It was intoxicating and I wanted more. I wanted to be an Olympian.

***

A year earlier in the summer of 2004, my mom and brother attended a parade celebrating Baltimore’s

hometown hero Michael Phelps and his Olympic victories. I refused to attend because I would have

missed my own practice. They brought me back a poster that showed Phelps immersed underwater,

floating just above the bottom of the pool. He was making what swimmers call bubble rings: perfect

bubble spheres that float towards the water’s surface when you blow air out of your mouth in small

spurts. On the poster, sleek bold lettering stated Some kids worship superheroes. Some kids become one. It

remains in my childhood bedroom today.

THE UNDER REVIEW

69

Phelps’ team was North Baltimore Aquatic Club (NBAC), and I was recruited to join NBAC not long after

my mom and brother brought home the poster. The coaches thought I could help the girls in my age group

break a National Age Group relay record, which was terrifying and flattering at the same time. While my

parents were afraid the team would be too intense, they we were also relieved the team trained at our

summer club, Meadowbrook. This meant less time shuttling me around town.

I did help my new teammates break National Age Group relay records, and the coaches eventually placed

a few of us into an elite group of swimmers with some former Olympians and Olympic hopefuls. Phelps

was training with the University of Michigan at the time, but he’d saunter down the pool deck on his visits

home to Baltimore and join us for a practice or two. I’d choose a lane far away because his presence

intimidated me, but I would stare over in awe while we kicked up and down the pool. My poster had come

to life.

***

In the swimming world, there’s a category of swim parent very similar to the ones you see on shows like

Dance Moms. There were a lot of them at NBAC, but my parents fell so far outside this group it was

laughable. Mom hated these intense parents so much that she’d purposely arrive to meets late with her

trademark insulated coffee tumbler. I’d later learn this tumbler housed her contraband cocktail of vodka,

orange juice, and Sprite. The cocktail calmed Mom’s nerves, not because she was nervous for my swims

but because I was. That same summer, I managed to get so worked up before my 200-butterfly that I had

an asthma attack on the second lap. The whole crowd watched as my hyperventilating body was pulled

out of the water so I could suck on my inhaler like a pacifier.

Even with all the anxiety I felt during meets and Mom’s constant encouragement to quit, I couldn’t step

away. Nervous as I’d get, I still swam fast in meets and continued climbing the ranks. I figured this was part

of my Olympic journey.

***

During high school, I committed to swim at the University of Richmond in exchange for a generous

scholarship. My freshman year, I made the cut to swim the 800-freestyle in USA Swimming’s Summer

National meet. This was the most competitive meet I’d ever qualified for, and my goal for the summer was

to make the cut to swim in Olympic Trials. When I returned home from college in the spring and went back

to NBAC, Phelps and his coach had returned to train for the 2012 summer Olympics. Since I was attending

Nationals, I got to join the elite group and even travel with them to the Olympic Training Center in

Colorado Springs for several weeks of intensive altitude training.

While I started off feeling like a guppy again in this group, I gradually gained confidence as I worked my tail

off in practices. There was even a female Olympian I kept pace with during several practices. I was realistic

enough to know the chances of qualifying for the Olympic team were slim, but these were the moments

where I’d believe there was a shot. What if I made the Trials cut this summer and had a fast year ahead?

What if I had a race like my 100 I.M. against Amy Halligan?


70 WALKER

I felt ready to achieve this before stepping onto the blocks to swim the 800-freestlye at Nationals. I’d been

training harder than ever and was uncharacteristically confident. The 800-freestyle is a long race, but I felt

strong and in control as I cruised up and down the pool for 16 laps. I kept repeating the trials cuts in my

head—8:50.49. When I slammed my hand into the touch pad, the clock read 8:54.35. It was my best time,

but I hadn’t reached my goal.

This marked the beginning of the end for me and the sport. Instead of having the fast year I dreamed of, I

hit what the swimming community calls a plateau; I was unable to better any of my times after my summer

training with Phelps and company. By my senior year, I felt like I was fighting with the water daily and then

managed to slip on ice and bruise my tailbone before the championship meet. I swam okay at the

championship all things considered, but I was ready to retire. When we returned to campus, it was over.

***

It’s taken me several years to want to swim again. When I talk about my swimming career since retiring,

many people ask me, “did you even like swimming?” After they hear about the early mornings, intense

pressure, and ongoing disappointments, they wonder why I kept showing up. I haven’t had a good answer

until now.

Elite swimmers tend to look down on summer swimming, the arena where most of us got our start racing

in neighborhood pools and fueling up on Pixy Stix behind starting blocks. While most of my peers stopped

competing for summer teams when they reached their teens, that was out of the question for me. This is

where I fell in love with the water.

This summer, I purchased a membership to Meadowbrook, the pool where I swam with NBAC year-round

and in the summer as a Tomato. I use a lane far away from the other lap swimmers and fall into a rhythm as

I move from one side to the other. Lap after lap, I rediscover a kinship with the cool water. The memories

slip through my hands with each stroke, and I eventually fall into a meditation to the tempo of my

breathing. I fish out the good feelings from these meditative swims—strength, confidence, hope—and

carry them away with me and into the car. One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three, breathe.

THE UNDER REVIEW

71

Beach Girls

SARAH FAULKNER

for Kate

Ask Slater to drive you to the meet at Stone Steps. Your mom has the truck today. Big surprise, Slater

never shows. Walk past the Dairy Queen and the LiquorMart as you hike west to the beach. Rafe’s already

there when you arrive. His lips turn up in a smile that eats up his face. He’s got his skateboard with him. Do

you wanna see a new trick? You do. Sit on a parking block and watch him practice his pop shuvit. Watch his

hair slick back as he pushes the board and gains speed. Watch the small kick turns he makes with his feet,

the pop as he ollies, the grim look of determination on his face as he kicks the board 180 degrees and then

lands. You clap for him. You motherfucking clap, ok? He’s the first boy you’ve ever loved. Somehow he found

you in all that cosmic dark and now you race alongside each other, comets burning across the black.

He can’t stay long. He’s going to play rehearsal soon. He’s the lead.

Walk down to the shore alone and look south towards the jutting cove of La Jolla and past that, Mexico

blurring at the horizon. Wade into the ocean ankle deep. Don’t look north. You never look north. Walk

home sandals in your hand, calloused feet on the pavement, and sand between your toes. Billy sings in

your ears the whole time: behind me, the grace of falling snow; cover up everything you know; come save me

from the awful sound of nothing.

Mom’s at work when you get home. Watch The Simpsons while you eat the food she left you in the

microwave before her shift started. Shake & Bake chicken with watery yellow squash. Undress in the

bathroom and look at the tan lines on your body. All those shapes and lines curving around your skin like a

highway. It’s June and in three months, you’ll be leaving for the city and it’ll be asphalt, fog, and municipal

transportation.

Slater throws rocks at your patio door. You unslide the door from its lock and find him standing in your

mom’s hydrangea bushes. Take his outstretched hand. He walks you over to his car, a beat-up old Toyota

Camry with a surf rack and a Santa Cruz sticker on the bumper. His dark blonde hair falls to his chin and

he’s forever shaking it out of his face. It falls forward onto your cheeks when he presses you against the

car and kisses your lips. Listen to him bite back a moan as he presses his fingers inside you. Like he’s been

waiting all day to feel you. Call him Peter under your breath. Tell him you’re Wendy. Tell him to make you

fly.

Be good in the water. Be a better swimmer than most girls and most boys. Girls don’t care, but when boys

find out you were on a competitive swim team for 10 years, they immediately want to race you. They smile


72

when they ask but the farce is clear. So you oblige them, and you’ve never, not one fucking time, lost. One

boy even stopped midway in the pool and reversed direction to try and beat you to the wall and you still

lapped him. And each win is exactly the same: the moment the absurdity sinks in, the way they push their

hair out of their eyes, chests heaving, trying to figure out how to save face.

You’re from a beach town. You live in a small condo with your mom 2 miles away from the Pacific Ocean.

Your mom’s job barely covers the essentials, so you never, and I mean never, have money. But the beach is

free, so that’s where you are. First as a child eating KFC from a greasy paper bin and making drip castles,

then as a breakout swim team star learning how to surf at Junior Guards, and now, one girl out there in a

pack of boys, gunning for waves and taking your wipeouts.

You’re not going to go pro or anything. You’re not out there doing aerials or 360s. You drive past the local

surf competitions. That’s not why you surf. You’re out there for the silence. When you paddle out past the

furthest break and turn your board around, you float barely tethered to this world. San Diego minimized

in a yellow stretch of color with pinpricks of neon umbrellas. You’re out there to feel small, to feel grace.

This is your church. You paddle in front of a swell and feel the exact moment the wave has you in its grips.

You drop in, gut bottoming out, and turn at the bottom. You glide on top of the water, and for the briefest

of moments, you ride the celestial tide of the universe.

But--day by day--you watch the population at the beach, at your home, change. You know what’s

happening.

BMWs replace station wagons and old sedans. Polos and loafers replace flip flops. Fewer people walk

around, but the roads are bumper to bumper. Upscale boutiques and hair salons edge out dive bars and

community markets. A new homeowners group has started a petition to revoke the license of a local

tattoo shop down the street from your home.

Your friends are the children of plumbers and mechanics. Of retail and service staff. The rich live just 5

miles east in the Ranch or down the coast in La Jolla. They steadily infiltrate your break, the one you grew

up surfing. Tourists escaping the heat of LA and Arizona are right behind. They buy up the coastal

properties and leave them mostly vacant year round.

There’s nothing to do but laugh at them side-stepping down the stairs on careful feet, new RipTide

wetsuits in hand and zinc bands across their noses and cheeks. Tucked under their arms are shiny short

boards they can’t even stand up on. They don’t know about learning first on long boards, preferably foam.

Watch them gaze out at the surf, trying to figure out where to paddle out. They don’t know they should

start with whitewash. They don’t know how to get out of an actual riptide. They don’t know about the

stingrays or bees in the tideline.

And the local grimeheads at the break--Skindog, Bones, Condor, Beetle, and Slater-- won’t suffer fools.

You watch them outgun each other for waves. You see them drop in on tourists. They break boards

sometimes. He’s a kook. Get the fuck outta my water. But this is your crew. The broke-as-fuck-but-live-inparadise

crew.

THE UNDER REVIEW

FAULKNER 73

In the water, you surf alongside them. You’ve sat front row to their off-color jokes about public hair and

VD. They rate the girls on shore (mostly 7s). You hear them comment on your ass (meaty). You see them

make jerk-off gestures to their buddies when you paddle by. You hear them greet each other hey boys.

Always hey boys. In the water, they don’t talk to you. They only talk around you. You’re allowed in this

space because you can surf and you can swim, but that’s it.

Even so, you like these dirty boys. They smoke you out and drive you places. You drink their beer and film

their tricks. If you ask, they’ll give you tips on pumping the wave for maximum speed. If you ask, they’ll

teach you how to drive off from the bottom of a wave, turn up the face and carve back down led by your

heels and arms. Don’t move your shoulders, Slater always says. They enjoy it when you need them. And

sometimes, sometimes, it’s like that.

But most of the time, you have to arrive a fully formed surfer born from the head of Zeus before even

entering the break.

Every girl knows this. Every queer kid and every black and brown kid, too.

After surfing, you load up your board into your truck bed and deck change into a tank and sweatpants. A

car horn blears at you and you turn in time to see a man’s flaccid penis shaking back and forth out of the

passenger window of a car. You see the silhouette of the driver throw his head back to laugh as they speed

out of sight.

Before you are anything else, you are a fantasy. The beach girl. Desirable, young, and tan. You laugh easily

and wear little clothing. You’re Pam Anderson and Gidget and Brooke Shields. A Betty. You have

nicknames like Roxy and Blondie. You are vitality, sexuality, and innocence, and you decorate the shore

like living seaglass. People don’t expect to see beach girls at the drug store picking up in the morningafter-pill

or feeding coins into a washing machine at the local laundromat. Beach girls are known for

watching surfers, but never are surfers. Their hair isn't a polished pile of waves, but rather a frizzled briny

mess. Their noses are red from the sun and eyes puffy from the salt. They drive run down station wagons,

not corvettes. They are tired from working long shifts at the pizza place and at the tire shop. They’re tired

of trying to find breaks with the fewest possible boys. Of living in bodies perpetually on display. Of

entering spaces which only want to see them as fantasy.

You once overheard Beetle say i love beach girls but Beetle doesn’t love anything but surfing and Tijuana

and everyone knows it.

Wait for Slater outside the Java Depot. Find Condor on the outside patio, plucking his guitar over a cup of

yerba mate. He’s got a Spanish textbook out in front of him. Last month, he walked but technically he

hasn’t finished high school until he gets this class done. But after that--he tells you--he’s headed to

Thailand for an epic surf trip. Maybe Bali after. He’s trying to go pro. His hair is shaved close to his scalp,

and he’s copper bronze all over. He wears a hemp necklace and an oversized Mexican poncho. His big

coffee brown eyes always look a little sad. He gives you a clove cigarette and it feels like fiberglass in your


74

lungs but you stay and smoke, listening to Condor’s litless plucking. Realize Slater is standing you up again.

Realize you don’t care as much.

Lose endless afternoons with Rafe driving down and up the coast in his Wagoneer to different surf or

skate spots. Sing along to Fugazi and Bad Religion. Rafe’s afro has grown out and when he sings, he shakes

it back and forth wildly. He pantomimes drumming on the steering wheel. His drink cup holds a lighter, a

hair pick, one of his silver rings, and the haiku you wrote him during your creative writing class last

semester: we drip like honey; a slow and golden sunset; now a fire sea. He’s a year younger so you don’t have to

worry about him moving away just yet. Lean your seat back. Prop your right foot out the window. Rafe

switches it to 91X and then it’s the Chili Peppers and Bob Marley and Sublime.

When you’re alone, listen to The Jesus Lizard, The Pixies, The Replacements. New Order, Bjork. Thom

rhapsodizing from your speakers: kill me Sarah, kill me again with love.

Rafe has a problem with fighting. He’s easy to anger. Not at you. Never to you. But he’s been suspended

twice, and this summer he’s taking an anger management class his parents insisted on. He tells me he

reads the whole time. Bukowski first. Then Kerouac. He’s moving onto Ellis next. His knuckles are still

scabbed over from a scuffle at the skate park last week. Maybe read some girls, you say.

Spend your mornings and early afternoons nannying for a couple kids. Their mother used to be your

counselor from the Boys and Girls Club. After that, you go home, walk the dog, and eat your mom’s food

from the microwave. Take a shower, and wait until it’s dark. Drive to Slater’s. Walk through the unlocked

front door. All the boys are sitting around watching Bones’s new video. Sit behind them on the kitchen

stool. You watch their tawny manes nod and jeer at each other when someone gets a good wave. Condor

turns around and signals you to meet him outside. He lights up a joint and takes a long inhale. You don’t

speak. Not when he passes it to you. Not for the entire it takes you both to finish. And then, you forget

time. You’re as high as the motherfucking eucalyptus which tower over the house. And what a perfect

word to capture such a feeling. You’re so high you don’t notice Slater coming outside and reaching for you.

He pulls you face forward into his chest and you tuck your nose into his armpit. He smells like salt and

beer. He takes you down the hall past his roommates. In his bedroom, you fall into his unmade bed and

sand on his sheets grits the back of your naked arm. He stands over you, giving you a strange look you’ve

never seen before. You know I like you, right? he asks. If you were sober, you’d answer I know, but since

you’re not you stare back at him. You stare for so long he flinches and says I’m sorry. You reach out and

press your hand between his legs. He hardens under your touch. When you look up at him, his features are

pained. For a brief moment, his ache matches your own. It makes everything desperate. When you take

him in your mouth you feel him shudder all the way from the tip of his dick to the center of his third eye.

At parties, watch the boys zero in on the drunkest girls. You watch as they settle around one on the couch.

They ignore her. The joke around and posture with the animal energy of young men. The girl is timid,

almost unsure how she became the center of the group. She nods in and out, laughing with them at times.

Through it all, no one says a word to her. When she gets up to leave, you watch Beetle grab the back of her

shorts and yank her back down. Her legs jut out from the force as she lands on her ass. The look on her

face haunts you as you leave. Happy to be noticed, terrified about what that means.

THE UNDER REVIEW

FAULKNER 75

The fair comes to town and, like always, your mom gets the free summer pass from her job, some perk that

came from her union’s bargaining. You go with Rafe. You go with Slater. You go with Condor. You go by

yourself. You eat grinders, kettle corn, fried oreos. You wander the exhibition halls, rubbing on age-defying

lotion on your unblemished skin and buying a toe ring. You look at woven purses from the Rasta shop and

Russian nesting dolls from another. You watch a demo of a paring knife that does all the cutting while you do

all the eating. Go outside and sit on the Footsie-Wootsie. Sometimes you slip in a quarter, sometimes you

don’t. You wander through the Gem & Minerals tent and the woodworking tent; the local art expo takes a

whole afternoon. Your favorite is the floor hosting collections. Old license plates, brass spoons, Star Wars

collectibles. Old Watson’s bottles, pastel pyrex cookware, and jade buddha statues. You wonder about the

one who owns the Cabbage Doll collection and the one with the switchblades. On the Grand Stage, you

see Smokey Robinson and Carrot Top. You ride the Zipper, the Falling Star, the Scrambler. You bribe adults

to buy you Coronas in the beer garden. You get your natal chart rendered (born under a waxing crescent

moon traveling through Aquarius); the mystic tells you you’ll never fit in. You look down at your tan skin

clasped in the milky flesh of hers; you fucking know that already. You walk past the pig races and the

motorcycle bike competition, through the livestock tents and gardening showcase. You leave the

fairgrounds and walk west less than a mile until you hit the Pacific Ocean. You walk the beach under a full

moon traveling through Taurus. Where God is.

At the beach, you lay out on your towel nearly naked. You cross your arms behind your head and tuck your

chin to look down the length of your body. Through your parted thighs is the endless glass of the Pacific.

No waves means no surfers, so there’s nothing to mar your view. It’s just you and the sun on your flesh and

later the cool ocean water tonguing you like a lover.

Condor gets his passing score on his Spanish I test and now he’s a high school graduate. You drive him,

Skindog, and Bones to the airport in your truck. They're indeed off to Thailand. Bones is going to film

Condor. He’s newly signed to Hurley and he needs footage decked out in his sponsored gear. Skindog’s just

going to drink. Drive them 45 minutes south to Lindbergh Field, San Diego passing by in a series of dreamy

postcards. Del Mar, Opal Cliffs, OB, Old Town. At the airport drop off you lean over the center console and

say through the opened passenger window don’t drown motherfuckers.

Slater’s moody without the boys. He wants to shoot video but nobody’s around. You ride his skateboard

down to Pizza Port to grab the two of you dinner. You run into Marisol there, your old friend from swim

team. She’s sloppy drunk and she holds onto you, swaying on her feet. She’s not going to college in the fall,

and she’s already begun her new life. I have to tell you something, she says. You know Casey, right? From

school? Of course, you reply. Everyone did. He’d been very popular in school, a bit of a charming bad boy,

always dating the newest popular girl. Marisol shakes her head in disbelief and proceeds to tell you how

they ran into each other at a party. He came up to her and started flirting. She was perplexed at first. I

didn’t think you knew who I was, she told him. They went back to her place where she accidentally spilled a

bottle of beer all over them both. So they took a shower together. All of a sudden, she says, he’s crying. The

kind of crying where he’s fighting to hold in each sob. Where everything comes out choked and harsh. She

didn’t know what the fuck happened. She patted his back and he reached for her hand. He said he was

sorry. He said he was lonely. This guy didn’t look at me twice in school--she tells you--but there he was telling

me I was as beautiful as the moon.


76

You skate back to Slater’s, the pizza balanced on your palm. The cool humid night curls your hair and

dampens your skin. The sky’s in twilight the whole time. You don’t look up at the moon. You never do.

There’s so much down here.

You don’t really like it but Rafe loves ska. He’s forever taking you down to SOMA Live to watch $10 shows.

One time he even got onstage to sing with The Aquabats. And you marvel at it even though you’ve seen

him on countless stages. The way he was born for it.

You check the mail and find a letter from your university. Inside is an off-to-college checklist with items

you don’t even own now. Shower caddies, under-the-bed storage bins, stackable desk trays, and portable

speakers. You hope your roommate doesn’t care when you just show up with good music, an extensive

book collection, and your hippy-dippy clothes.

Rafe swings by and you down a Coke real fast as he explains his progress in moving from a 3 to 5 stair ollie.

Wanna see? he asks, and like always, you say yes. You pee right before you leave, but on the five minute

drive down to the County Plaza steps next to the beach, your bladder fills up again. And it’s so stupid but it

fills you with shame. You watch him run up the steps and set up the trick. You try to ignore your discomfort

but just as soon as he pops the ollie, front knee shifting into a slant as he sails through the air and lands,

you tell him you have to pee again. You always tell him the truth. Well, you did drink a whole can, he says

without a hint of insincerity and then takes your hand as you walk back to the car. He rubs his thumb over

yours. The two of you have never even kissed. You probably never will. On the ride home, he puts on Social

D and smokes a joint. You race in the house to pee and notice your mom--still in her scrubs--stretched out

on the couch, her feet in nursing clogs up on the coffee table. In the bathroom, you pee in extreme relief

and overhear Rafe chat your mom up and down like he’s not high as a sonuvabitch. Always the actor.

Always onstage.

Later, Rafe says how cool your mom is. How much love she has for you. How he could tell right away when

he met her she was a nurse. Except he didn’t say nurse; he said healer. And it rewired something in your

brain about her.

Mail update: you get your dormmate’s name with a short description she provided and her phone number.

Meet Priya from Los Angeles who loves flea markets, Converse high-tops, and street art. Call her up and

say you’ll bring the records if she brings the wall deco. She responds back:

All over it. You drink?

Like a fish. You smoke?

Like a chimney.

Lately, your dog has been standing in the doorway to your bedroom. That’s it. Just standing there, staring

at you in your bed. Like he knows.

Slater comes over and you sneak him past your mom’s room. He is quiet, even for him. He takes off your

clothing, item by item. He watches your face as he does it. He seems sad and for the first time since this

THE UNDER REVIEW

FAULKNER 77

started with you two, kind. He licks you out until your thighs are shaking and you're arching your hips up

into his mouth, desperate to come. Always so desperate.

Wake up and see Slater passed out next to you. He’s got an angry furrow in his brow. Reach over to

smooth it out and wake him. Drive to the Potato Shack. Share a plate-sized pancake in silence. He’s

distant, staring at food without seeing it. You suggest a nap on the beach after? He declines. He says he has

to go. He pays and says I’m sorry. Always I’m sorry. You look around at the table in confusion, ignorant your

whole life. For what?

The next day Rafe tells you about seeing Slater with his ex Caroline. I’m sorry honeybee. Don’t lose your

stinger, ok?

Back home, you find a letter from Condor in the mailbox. He’s met someone. A Thai girl. They’re in love

and he’s going to stay. He doesn’t know when he’ll be back. He has to marry her first for the green card.

You try calling Slater but he never picks up. He ignores you at parties and at the coffee shop. He gets

Bones to go over and grab his favorite Encinitas Surfboards hoodie from your house. At the beach, you see

Caroline wait for him on the sand. She doesn’t surf, but she stars in the side skits in his surf videos. In one

she’s doing a bike trick dressed as Evil Knievel; in another she’s walking down the street, asking random

men if they want to fuck her.

You get up every day. You nanny. You surf after work. You drive down the coast, smoking cigarettes and

listening to The Cure. You wonder how long it will take for your skin to lose its salty flavor and for your tan

to fade. For your sun-bleached hair to grow darker. To get used to wearing shoes again. You wonder how

long it will take to miss this fucking beach town because right now you hate it.

The days grow shorter. Rafe coaxes you out at night to watch him hit golf balls down at the course next to

your condo complex. He hits these long drives. The balls sail into blackness and disappear from sight. He

leans back and his too-large mouth opens up to howl at the moon. He nudges you to join him, but you

don’t. You don’t want to hear the sound of your own voice so loud. He taps one finger--so light it’s a kiss--

on your upper lip. I miss it already, he says.

It’s barely August when you get the news about the fight. A sidewalk fight. All three under 20. The details

are scant, but a passerby says Rafe started it first and in your gut you know it’s true. Running his big mouth

and he got a knife in the gut for it. He died at the scene, his blood rushing out like high tide all over the

sidewalk before paramedics arrived. The other two males were last seen escaping in the same direction.

Their fight forgotten in the wake of its violence.

Overnight, Rafe becomes a lost cause, a martyr of the working class, a cautionary tale. The news report

calls him a “troubled young man from the poorer side of town.” But in the pictures sitting on your desk, he

appears a beautiful young man with a caramel-colored afro and a ferocious smile, a caged sun, the love of

your life.


78 FAULKNER

A memorial is planned down at the beach for Rafe. You rsvp yes. And you want to go, you really do. You

want to show everyone what this grief has made you, you want to show him, but you can’t. You can’t pick

out the clothes. You can’t lift your hand to apply the makeup. You can’t get the hair dryer out. You sit at the

top of the staircase and tell your mom you’re not going. She nods with understanding. Of course, you

always forget. She loved him, too. She makes you roasted chicken and rice. Your favorite meal.

In the water, you dolphin out until your waist-deep. You dive under the next wave and begin swimming.

You swim out to the kelp beds. As soon as the slimy tops of the kelp forest touch your feet, you stop. A

pack of Garibaldi disperse at your arrival. You push your chest out and float on your back. You heard once

that otters tangle themselves in the kelp so they don’t float away when sleeping. You reach out and grab

the frond closest to you, twining the stripe around your arm as you drift. But it’s not quite right, you see.

Because you’re already gone.

Slater leaves you a voicemail but you erase it without listening. The rest of the crew go out of their way to

avoid you. The grief hollows out your eyes and turns you brutal. Gone are your easy smiles and your gowith-the-flow

nature. Now everything matters. It matters so much you can’t fake anything. They’re right

to steer clear of it. The things you would say to them.

Take all your nanny money and go to Target. You buy everything from your checklist, plus new

headphones, shoes, a plaid flannel and a jean jacket--essentials for city life. It feels surreal to plan for this

future. If Rafe was here, he’d be dancing in the aisles. He’d be singing about your upcoming move. He

would be too much about it because he was too much about everything. Too loud, too charming. Too angry

and too joyful. He gave you too much love and made you big with it. And now you watch your items as they

slide across the checkout counter. These new items that will mark your new life. Because that’s the

cruelest joke of all. That you will go on living without him in this body made big with his love, and it will

pour out of you but never again into him.

Your last weekend at home arrives. You spend the day at the beach with your mom, smelling her sun block

(Bain de Soleil) and eating her tuna fish sandwiches. You write Rafe’s name in the sand. The tide washes it

away, so you write it again. You resolve right then and there, the sun as your witness, to write it forever.

The next day you hear Caroline is pregnant with Slater’s baby. Cry about it deeply for 34 minutes in a

beach parking lot. Deep anguished sobs, all of your grief mingling into one release. You’ve never cried

something so completely out in your life. Drive home in complete silence, feeling your organs and blood

rearrange under your skin to their new fit. Come home and tell your mom you’re fine when she sees your

face. Actually mean it though. Go upstairs and smoke a cigarette on the upstairs balcony. Watch the moon

appear through the swaying eucalyptus. Think about the girl Condor met in Thailand, how you’ll probably

never hear from him again. Think about Casey crying in Marisol’s shower. The girl Beetle yanked down by

her shorts. Your dog, staring at your childhood bed. The mornings you woke up in it with Rafe. His smile

eating up his face. Think about the dreams you’ll have of him for the rest of your life. The way he will

appear, forlorn and angry about his death. That you’ll always be slightly reeling from it. Get OK living just

on the border of that black hole. You’re leaving in 12 hours. Look down at the sand between your toes and

realize that’s all that’s left now. Just the sand.

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79

The End of Things

CLAIRE KORTYNA

It’s the last game of our season, of my whole athletic career, although I don’t know it yet.

My tongue is thick and dry, chafing against my worn black mouth guard. I suck it against the hard roof of

my palate until I feel the urge to gag. But I don’t retch. I’m too tired. The air here in southern Maryland

hangs still and heavy over the Bermuda grass field.

It's double-overtime in our semi-finals game, sudden death, during my senior year of college. Losing this

game means immediate elimination. I haven’t been subbed out all match and we’re defending our third

penalty corner in a row.

I’m crouched in a runner’s sprint alongside the goal cage next to two other players and the goalie herself.

Since it’s overtime there are less of us on the field than normal. The opposing team lines the white halfcircle

around the net, poised to rip off a shot, poised to score. If they make this, they win. If they make this,

my time as a collegiate athlete is over. Forever. Field hockey will disappear from my life—the sweat, the

blood, the injuries, the fun, the joy, the wildness, the years—all will vanish, shrink, to a blip on my

undergraduate radar, not even worth mentioning in a resume.

From my crouch I heave to drag breath deep into my lungs. I can feel the sear of the sun along my hair’s

zig-zag part. Today I have three intersecting French braids—nothing will slip. My foot taunts the white

paint line—leg tensed. Inside my turf shoe one toenail blackens with each dull throb of my pulse. I clench

my stick in my right hand—sprinting position.

I’m panting things out like, “Let’s go ladies!” and “We’ve got this! Heart and pain!” to the young women next to

me, just as breathless as I am. I’m a captain, servant, and leader. It’s my job to keep us going. My legs feel

like rain barrels, but adrenaline still surges. My personhood has been boiled down, sharpened and honed,

and all that’s left is this will, this intent: reach the ball before their lead striker takes the shot. Everything

we have been trying to build together is laid out before me, all factors culminating in this singular moment.

At the last time-out, girls on the sidelines ran to bring us our water bottles. Our coach, Katie, brought us in,

gestures snapping with emphasis. She said something like, stay focused and we need to be passing up our

strong side, but time-out was a blur of chugging water and shaking my thigh muscles to keep the muscles

fluid, warm. In our huddle I glanced around and noticed that Maria’s eyes had gone vacant in the heat. I

clacked our sticks together, bringing her gaze to mine. We got this, I mouthed. We all had to believe it, or it


80

wouldn’t work. Rachel, my fellow captain, gasped beside me, grimacing as she folded her toes against the

ground to stretch. Coach spoke again, first two minutes, she told us, let’s finish this in the first two minutes.

Then she crossed her arms and headed back to the bench. It was up to me to sound the final rallying cry.

Field hockey balls are solid, hard plastic—and can be hit in the 80 mph range. I’ve broken two fingers and

have permanent calcifications on several of my metacarpals that ache cripplingly when hit the wrong way.

I’ve gotten a concussion, broken a toe, and lost at least 4 toenails. Then there are the countless scrapes,

twinged muscles, blisters. Preseason is plagued with diarrhea and ice baths, lactic acid build-ups, and heat

stroke.

Then there are the bruises. Field hockey really makes art of the bruise. They bloom like tropical flowers on

shins and thighs. The tender center is a dot of stark white—the shock of the ball’s initial contact. A perfect

ring of red surrounds it, a teacup of pain. From here, color fans out in a nebula of purple and green like

black marker chromatography. Upon contact, the smacked flesh immediately goose-pimples despite the

body’s overall heat. Lightly textured, richly colored, bruise art.

In the huddle I take another quick gulp of water and reiterate the well-worn phrases, “Alright ladies, we’re

going to go out there and give everything we have. It’s going to take a lot of heart and a lot of pain. We are going to

play hard. But most importantly we’re going to have fun and we’ll do it together. Hawks on three: One, Two, Three,

HAWKS!” It’s ritual, it’s oath, it has to be enough to ignite a final push, to get us all to pusher harder, dig

deeper. It’s begun to fascinate me, even then, the ways language carries a power greater than mind, than

need, than exhaustion. Our success or our failure hung on those words, and their ability to garner absolute

investment.

All twenty-three of us press our sticks together, shoulders in, body to body. We chorus on “HAWKS!” and

part ways. The seven of us overtime players jog back out to our positions on the field, while the rest

disperse to stand in a tense-edged row on the sideline.

Our fans are their customary mix of rowdy, often drunk, soccer players who yell and holler from camping

chairs and blankets along the edge of the field, along with the committed family members who come

regularly with cameras and signs. Today however, all sit quiet. I’m praying that we get the ball out of the

penalty circle—that it’ll make it to one of our forwards who will be racing in from midfield. I can’t do many

more of these. I’m the “fly” so it’s my job to flat-out sprint at the top of the circle as that same opponent

winds up to take a huge shot on goal. I’m supposed to cut down the angles, to make her hesitate, to get my

stick there, if I can travel fast enough. I know at least one of these penalty corners is my fault: foot-foul.

But I am so, so tired. I have reached the edge.

The goalie thumps her stick against the wooden back of the cage. It’s nearly time. Through her mask, her

gaze remained fixed on the inserter of the other team: watching, waiting. I glance at Rachel, whose fingers

grip the coarse black weave of the net beside my head. We make eye contact and breathe. I know her shin

splints are killing her. She has a small, delicate body, and sports have been a strain—muscles and tendons

unraveling.

THE UNDER REVIEW

KORTYNA 81

“GO!” The ball is passed. The goalie gives the signal. I take off.

Acid burns in my legs, in my lungs, in my arms. I’m sprinting, sprinting, sprinting—straight at their main

striker who’s getting passed the ball, who’s going to try and slam it right back in my direction. The direction

I’m trying to block.

I’ve been up against this player all game. She’s thick, the largest player in our conference, with a full sleeve

of tattoos on each well-muscled arm. I’ve never been anything but sturdy, solid from childhood, but I have

had to struggle not to be pushed around by her. I dig deeper, arrowing toward her. Go. Gogogo. I’m snarling

across final few feet between us, stick outstretched, 10ft, 8ft, 6ft. My hip flexor strains—the muscle still

tight from when I ripped it last season. But this has to be enough. The striker receives the ball—5ft. Her

body twists as she winds up for the swing, stick high in the air behind her head—4ft. I’m closer, but not

close enough. Shit. She’s going to get off a full shot, and I just have to hope I stop it somehow.

Please. I'm praying in that tiny private voice, so small it goes nearly unnoticed. Please, don’t let this shot hit

me in the throat. As always, in a speed nearly too rapid-fire to gauge or recall, that possibility flashes

through my mind as I charge forward: me on my back, suffocating under crushed voice box, straining to

breathe until the world goes dark.

Sheer willpower and I lunge the last few steps. Thwack!-Thwack!

She shoots; I make contact. I deflected the main shot! This is good. This means I could have stopped the—

Wesleyan erupts into cheers.

It went in. I was the last to touch it. I deflected the shot. And it went in.

My stick thuds from my grip. And I'm on my knees in the grass, head in hands. My body shakes. My face is

hot and wet. Everything that has held me together dissolves. It’s a reaction I would never have had

publicly if I could help it. But it was uncontrollable. An unspooling. It’ll be commented on later, when I’m

out that weekend and run into those who were watching.

It takes my team a bit to find me because I’m near the Wesleyan players who have mobbed together,

screaming and jumping. Then my team arrives. My own women surround me. Hands are in my hair,

gripping my arms, dozens of voices soothe and weep. We're all pressed together and I'm up off my feet.

Someone has grabbed my stick and together we make our way to the sideline. I find Rachel and we hug in

silence.

In our post-game huddle, we peel off socks and shin guards from throbbing feet. Coach speaks at length,

but my brain reels without recording. By the time we finally gather our equipment and head toward the

locker room, most of the crowd is gone. My family couldn’t make it, school too far away, but my boyfriend

Christian is there. He waited, although I didn’t expect him to, lanky tallness hitched to the side against a

crutch.


82 KORTYNA

He hugs me briefly, an arm rubbing up and down my soaked back. His kiss brushes dried salt crystals off

my forehead. He says nothing. His blue eyes dart within their thick-lashed frame, returning to my gaze and

avoiding it in turns. I want more from him, but I know he can't give it. He's still in a brace for his torn ACL—

an injury that cut his soccer season short early. He was a captain too. We both grieve. There aren’t words

for either of us. Our relationship will end that winter.

I can’t remember the locker room. Next thing I recall I’m in the bathroom of my townhouse alone, stripping

off tape and blister guards and spandex. Then I’m in the shower. And I have music blasting. And I’m letting

myself feel it. The end of things.

Over, all over. A whole part of my life shorn. I’d been fired from a job I’ll never be able to get back.

Everything I’d spent years working for, finished. The entire portion of my self, a self that felt like a warrior,

that got to feel wild and strong, a sense of community, of sisterhood, of purpose, it’s over, gone, forever.

There’s a shockingly high rate of suicides and depression among Olympic athletes. Even Michael Phelps

has spoken out about his struggles with despair. Because, who are you if what has defined so much of your

life, your eating, your habits, your schedule, your pain, is over? Who are you when you lose the feral,

playful joy that made you feel strong and beautiful and free?

My dad calls later. He watched the game online. The main shot was a direct bullet at the lower left corner.

It was wide open, he says. Almost guaranteed to go in, but I deflected it upper center. I gave the goalie a

chance. It just happened too fast. We couldn’t have anticipated it. So it’s not my fault, he tells me. But I

only hear the end: My fault. My fault.

It’s just a game. It’s just a game. I tell myself that for weeks. For years. It’s just a game. But of course, as you

know, it wasn’t. It was something more.

THE UNDER REVIEW

83

On Walking into a Basketball Gym

DANA LOTITO-JONES

Why is the crude swell

of nostalgia like

cresting sun and falling darkness

kissing?

How can this sweetness

lather something so

twisted, conflicted, crazed

and tired?

Why will it never leave,

even after I have

resigned myself to a statistic

of mediocrity?

Why do the athlete’s muscles

retain so much memory,

all of it and none of it

touchable any longer?

How cruel, to teeter

on the physical sphere,

to thrust realms together

within me

without hopes of reunion.


84

Book Review

TERRY HORSTMAN

We Ride Upon Sticks

Quan Barry

Pantheon, 2020

ISBN: 9781524748098

What do you get when Dazed and Confused meets Stranger Things? How about when The Crucible and

Macbeth challenge the Bad News Bears and The Craft to a game of field hockey? Put all of those things

together, plop them down on the middle of a pitch in the same town that hosted the infamous witchcraft

trials in 1692, hand the referee’s whistle to Emilio Estevez and you get We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry.

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85

It’s a daunting combination, but don’t worry, Barry ties everything together and does so in surprising,

satisfying, and hilarious fashion.

The 1989 Danvers High School girls’ field hockey team is an endearing and entertaining bunch.

Unfortunately for them that hasn’t helped them win too many field hockey games together. That all

changes when the Falcons attend a pre-season summer camp and Mel Boucher, the team’s goalie (because

it’s always the goalie) signs a dark magic pledge in a spiral bound notebook with Emilio Estevez on the

cover. Each player on the Falcons signs as well and is given a torn strip of blue tube sock to tie around their

arm as a symbol to their collective witchery. Mayhem and a historic winning streak promptly ensue.

The magic propelling the Falcons to new heights isn’t the only sorcery at play in these pages. In a dense

and acutely detailed story containing stories on top of stories, Barry guides the reader gently, yet firmly,

and sometimes a little slowly, through the lives and realities of each one of the girls (and the one boy on

the team, too) who make up this team/coven.

Every player is developed with a rich and thorough back story. Tackling together personal struggles like

racial identity, gender norms, sexual desires and shame, and the overall struggle of just being a human in

the 1980s. The diligent details of so many parallel backstories at times come at the sacrifice of the pacing

of the novel, but Barry is excellent at letting dramatic tension slowly percolate in the background that it

kept me turning the pages eager to soak up every piece of information of each Falcon and how they move

through the world.

We Ride Upon Sticks is also a master class in Point of View as a clever, sardonic, and omniscient narrator

speaks for the team as one. A voice equally calculating as it is intoxicating.

We don’t spend a ton of time on the field hockey pitch because we don’t need to. Former high school

athletes know well the stories of what takes place on the field often pale in comparison to the ones taking

place before practice, after practice, on the bus rides, at the parties, or in this case, the woods conducting

sacrificial rituals.

Barry constructs the Falcons as a likable, easy-to-root-for underdog, but not in a campy, Disney sports

movie sort of way. The players are all wry, raw, messy, and flawed. All of them devout to Emilio, the official

harbinger of dark spirits at play. This is not sports fiction so much as it is fiction in conversation with a

sport as the vehicle to help us find our place in the world, what we’re searching for, and the support and

camaraderie that can only be forged in a high school locker room (or a coven).


86

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

TY CHAPMAN is a Twin Cities based author and poet of Nigerian and European descent. His recent

accomplishments include being named a Loft Literary Center Mirrors and Windows fellow & Mentor

Series fellow, creating a one-man shadow puppet and marionette show for Puppet Lab, and publishing

poems through SOFTBLOW and Oyster River Pages. His poems made the longlist for both Button Poetry’s

2020 Chapbook Contest, and Frontier Magazine’s 2021 New Voices contest. Ty’s debut picture book

SARAH RISING, represented by Savannah Brooks, is set to release in May 2022, through Beaming Books.

SCOTT CHIUSANO is a writer/editor, currently at MLB.com and formerly at the New York Daily News, with

fiction published in Toasted Cheese Literary Journal and The Twin Bill. He is a fan of slow rollers and Jacob

deGrom sliders.

MORGAN CHRISTIE’s work has appeared in Room, Aethlon, The Hawai'i Review, BLF Press, as well as others, and

has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry chapbook, Variations on a Lobster's Tale was the

winner of the 2017 Alexander Posey Chapbook Prize (University of Central Oklahoma Press) and her

second poetry chapbook Sterling was released by CW Books. Her first full-length short story manuscript

These Bodies was published by Tolsun Books (2020), and was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy

Award in fiction. Her most recent poetry chapbook when they come was released by Black Sunflowers

Press (2021) and is featured in the Forward Arts Foundation’s National Poetry Day exhibit.

EDWARD M. COHEN's story collection, Before Stonewall, won the Awst Press Book Award and was published

in June, 2021. His novel, $250,000, was published by G.P. Putnam's Sons; his novella, A Visit to my Father

with my Son, by Running Wild Press.

BOBBY CRACE is a writer, editor, and teacher in New York City. He has been published by various literary,

service industry, and sports publications. Bobby has an MFA from Stony Brook University and a BA from

Berklee College of Music.

ARIA DOMINGUEZ is a writer whose poetry and creative nonfiction navigate the terrain between beauty and

pain. Her work has been published in anthologies and she was the winner of the 2021 Porch Prize in

Creative Nonfiction, finalist for the 2021 Lighthouse Writers Workshop Emerging Writers Fellowship in

Nonfiction, and winner of a Fall 2021 Brooklyn Poets Fellowship. She works with a nonprofit focused on

food justice and lives in Minneapolis with her son.

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87

SARAH FAULKNER is originally from San Diego County. She is a 2021 University of New Orleans Lab Prize

finalist for her collection, American Heartbreaker. You can find her work at The Los Angeles Review, PANK,

Night Train, Iron Horse Literary Review, and The Southeast Review.

TOM FRANK is a multispectral writer and filmmaker living and working in Minneapolis, though some aspects

of this bio may be out of date.

AVERY GREGURICH is a writer living and working in Marengo, Iowa. He was raised next to the Mississippi

River, and has never strayed too far from it.

M.A.H. HINTON grew up in Montana and lives in Minnesota. His publications include poetry in Spitball,

Minnesota Review, Into the Void, Temenos, GFT, West Texas Literary Review, Blue Heron Review, Aji, Emerald

Coast Review. His chapbook Ordinary & Minor Mystics was a finalist for NDSU Press’s 2021 People of the

Prairie and Plains Award. He has also published several Western short stories. You can find out more

about him at his website, www.mahhinton.com.

DAVID KILPATRICK is a poet who divides his time between Minneapolis and Spicer, Minnesota. He recently

completed his MFA in poetry at Hamline University and, even so, still has a high opinion of Terry. David

also holds a PhD in Renaissance Art and has taught college art history.

LYDIA KLISMITH HANSEN lives and works as a freelance writer in St Paul, Minnesota, and is in the MFA

program at Hamline University. The Under Review is the first to publish her work; you can congratulate her

at www.lydiaklismith.com.

CLAIRE KORTYNA’s work has been published in The Maine Review, The Baltimore Review, The Jellyfish Review,

The Offbeat, and others. Her essay Lunar Musings won Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment’s

Home Voices Contest. Claire is a nonfiction PhD candidate at the University of Cincinnati and an Iowa

State University MFA graduate. Claire reads for The Cincinnati Review and The Sewanee Writers’

Conference.

MAREK KULIG was born in Poland and raised in New Jersey. A founding member of the Network of Eastern

European Writers (NEEW), his poems and translations appear or are forthcoming in 86 Logic, Fish

Publishing, Seneca Review, Entropy, National Translation Month, and elsewhere.

KATHRYN KYSAR is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and she edited the

anthology Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers. She is the founder of the creative writing

program at Anoka-Ramsey Community College. She performs with the Sonoglyph Collective and resides

with her non-sporty family in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

DANA LOTITO-JONES is an Upper School English teacher in New York City. She has published poetry in Ithaca

Lit, The Legendary, and The Academy of American Poets college prize section. She is an aspiring novelist.

MICHAEL METIVIER is a writer, musician, and editor living in Vermont. His work has appeared in journals

including Poetry, Words and Sports Quarterly, Washington Square, and African American Review, and is

forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, Green Mountains Review, Moist, and Northern Woodlands, among others.


88 CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

WILL MUSGROVE is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State

University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in trampset, Versification, Unstamatic,

(mac)ro(mic), Ghost Parachute, Serotonin, Rabid Oak, Flash Frontier, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter at

@Will_Musgrove.

RUSSELL NICHOLS is a speculative fiction writer and endangered journalist. Raised in Richmond, California,

he got rid of all his stuff in 2011 to live out of a backpack with his wife, vagabonding around the world ever

since. Look for him at russellnichols.com.

RODRIGO SANCHEZ-CHAVARRIA is a writer and performer of Peruvian heritage heavily involved with

Palabristas, a Minnesota based Latinx poets collective. He is a contributing author for A Good Time for

Truth: Race in Minnesota and received an MFA from Hamline University and writes about fatherhood, the

duality of two cultures in English, Spanglish and Spanish, and issues pertaining to his community.

MATTHEW SCHULTZ is the author of two novels: On Coventry and We, The Wanted. His chapbook of cento

paradelles is forthcoming from Beir Bua Press (January 2022) and his collection of prose poems is

forthcoming from ELJ Editions (May 2022).

ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO (he/him) is a poet and artist from the Hudson Valley, living in Chicago. He reads

submissions for Frontier Poetry, serves as business and grants manager for Another Chicago Magazine, and

co-curates Exhibit B: A Reading Series presented by The Guild Literary Complex. His debut poetry

collection is forthcoming in Spring 2022 with Unbound Edition Press. More of his work may be found at

www.alexwellsshapiro.com.

DANIKA STEGEMAN LEMAY is a Minneapolis poet whose work has appeared in 32 Poems, Afternoon Visitor,

CutBank Literary Journal, Forklift, OH, Harpy Hybrid Review, Leavings, and Word for/ Word, among other

places. Her video poem, “Then Betelgeuse Reappears” was an official selection for the 2021 Midwest

Video Poetry Festival. Danika’s debut collection of poems, Pilot, is available from Spork Press. Her website

is danikastegemanlemay.com.

JESSIE WALKER is a non-fiction writer currently based in Baltimore. She received her B.A. from the

University of Richmond and is currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing and publishing arts at the

University of Baltimore. Jessie is a swimmer, wife, cat mother, educator, and lover of anything that makes

her belly laugh. Her creative work has appeared in publications including Black Fork Review and Random

Sample Review.

RILEY WINCHESTER is a writer from Michigan. He will always be a Lions fan.

THE UNDER REVIEW

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES 89


The Under Review - Issue 5 | Winter 2022

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