Shall I compare thee to a matador?
Shall I compare thee to a matador?
Eivind E. Olsen
Off the bat, this poetic conceit
has some backspin to it.
Did I get that right? Oh good,
the crowd’s holding its breath still,
and kids with gloves are shading their eyes
as if beholding a solar eclipse–
and I’m trying to catch baseball’s gist
from Picasso’s La Tauromaquia prints,
I’ve seen exhibited in Ronda,
where cheers from the terraces
of its famous bullring rival Wrigley
and Fenway in historic gasp,
from achievements wielding a sword or lance.
It’s not in the bat this simile
strikes out, or worse… luckily the stakes aren’t that high
in baseball, where teams play both sides
of the field, while bullfighting I’d say
is a more one-sided display, with runs and slides
more improvised, and that’s taking nothing away
from the fine intuition of stealing a base.
But it’s from the pitcher’s mound
the poet’s matador is measured: the enjambment
of his curveball; a skill more in the hips’
sideways-purple-curtain-shimmy,
releasing a one-step arm-sling four-seam fastball,
while dressed in knee-socks and a montera
slightly more utilitarian
when squaring up a broad-shouldered slugger at bat,
rather than a bull scrapping hooves, tipping horns
at home plate: It’s all very masculine,
yet there’s a uniform dandiness in costume
and gold chain, and in Madrid there’s even a restaurant
serving the bull on a silver plate–every part of it–
who rarely gets a base on balls: I know, it’s harsh,
and I’m glad they don’t serve testicles
in the hot dogs at Yankee Stadium.
Eivind E. Olsen is a poet from Stavanger, Norway, who spent several years in Texas growing up, and is an MA student in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, The Dewdrop, Delta Poetry Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Cassandra Voices, Boudin (The McNeese Review), and the anthology The Writes of Spring to be published by Tupelo Press. He writes in English and Norwegian.
Mark Mosley is a public school 7th grade math teacher. He draws baseball cards when he is not driving his son to baseball or his daughter to gymnastics. His cards can be seen on Twitter @mosley_mark, on Instagram @idrawbaseballcards, and can be purchased at https://idrawbaseballcards.bigcartel.com/
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