Hank Kalet presents a compelling poem about baseball and teaching, expertly drawing parallels between the speaker’s personal life, Dwight Gooden’s mixed legacy, and a seemingly pedestrian classroom exercise.
Striking Out
Dwight Gooden’s been arrested
and I’m in a classroom
talking to students
about semi-colons.
There are three uses
for the semi-colon, more
than the number of innings
Doc pitched in his final game.
In his first game, he
struck out five. He didn’t
win again until May,
but, then, he was unhittable.
He was nineteen. I was
twenty-one. I worked
a delivery route.
He worked the strike zone,
won the Cy Young. Nothing
but cocaine could stop him.
I went back to school,
got a degree. He
won a championship,
made millions throwing
curveballs that broke
into the zone
like they fell from a desk.
Independent clauses
can be linked with semi-colons.
Drug stops with a jail sentence.
Fastballs with a slow change.
Use commas in lists,
unless clarity is needed. Use
the fastball to brush the batter
back from the plate,
then make him chase
a curveball in the dirt.
Gooden painted the corners
like a master, rapid-fire
and fierce like Pollack, precise
like Rothko. I use words
to make my point, commas
to bring it home.
There are eight uses
for the comma; there were
eight shutouts pitched by Gooden
in his Cy Young season,
eight chances given
to the phenom pitcher
whose violent, rising fastball
punctuated the rare period
when his Mets ruled the city.
In my classroom,
miss a test and you only get
one chance to make it right.
***
First published in Middlesex: A Literary Journal No. 6
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