Let’s Play

Let’s Play

By Mike Cecconi

Illustration by Sam Williams

there is organized semi-pro baseball
up near the Arctic Circle in Alaska
a summer college league in that
briefest of summers they get and
there’s a doubleheader there on
the one day of endless sunshine
 
there’s a fierce foolish gorgeousness in all this
having the unmitigated gall to say to the elements
in the face of six months of permanent midnight on
that one day of fluke freak twenty-four-hour beauty
ah hell, my dude
let’s play two
 
and so, I say unto you
ah hell, mon ami
let’s play three

This poem was the runner-up for the 2023 E. Ethelbert Miller Poetry Prize.

Mike Cecconi has been featured in such publications as Utica’s Doubly Mad and the UK’s Critical Quarterly, recently receiving honorable mention in the 2020 Wergle Flomp Comedic Poetry Contest. He’s performed Rochester Fringe Festival & Manhattan’s Anti-Folk Festival as well, part of the TEDx Utica series. He’s currently a library aide and runs the Utica Poets Society open mic & Little Falls Public Library’s Flash Fiction group. Mike holds a degree in screenwriting from Newhouse at Syracuse & lives in northern New York state. For more, you can follow him on Twitter or watch his TED Talk.

Sam Williams is a cartoonist, comics publisher and baseball enthusiast based in Bournemouth, UK.

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