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The Dream Court
The dream court is not ninety-four by fifty
or any other recognizable dimension,
in fact it only exists in a parallel universe
When you play there you are a half-step quicker
than anybody else,
your reactions are a fraction of a second faster
than anybody else’s,
you dribble the ball so well it seems there is
an invisible string connecting it to your hand,
and the basket becomes bigger whenever you shoot,
Almost everyone who plays plays there occasionally
I play there occasionally
Michael Jordan plays there every night
Labor Day
As a holiday it is much like Groundhog Day
Once a year the American worker is a curiosity
like Punxsatowny Phil,
stepping into the sun of media, attention,
then slipping through the country’s consciousness
to go back into the hole of media oblivion
for another year
And though we never learn whether the worker saw his shadow,
a safe prediction would be for another year of winter
An Accidental Death
At the alcohol-inspired hour of four a.m.
he fell over a railing in a fourth floor stairwell
and struck his head,
sending shards of skull deep into his brain,
severing his link with life immediately,
leaving no time for that life to flash before his eyes,
no time for a poet to concoct
an elaborate masturbation fantasy for him
like in that poem by James Dickey
He caromed off every railing on the way down
as if in a kind of macabre pinball machine,
finally hitting the ground a split second later
with the blue mask of death already on his face,
never to be removed
The next week there was a higher railing in that stairwell
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