The Under Review - Issue 4 | Summer 2021

ISSUE 4

SUMMER 2021

ISSUE 4, SUMMER 2021

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Terry Horstman

MANAGING EDITOR

Meghan Maloney-Vinz

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Carlee Tressel Alson

DESIGN EDITOR

JP Bertram

COVER DESIGN

Patrick Sexton

TABLE OF CONTENTS

POETRY

A Fable About Streaks ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO | 7

Learning to Dunk CHRIS ABBATE | 12

God, Bowling CHRIS ABBATE | 13

Church Softball RYAN HARPER | 18

Rinky Dink JESSICA GREGG | 27

David ANDREW GENT | 28

Family Reunion OWEN ELPHICK | 45

Russell BARRY PETERS | 47

The Runner MORROW DOWDLE | 62

CREATIVE NONFICTION

Imaginary Fear RHONDA ZIMLICH | 9

Take One ERIN HILL | 14

Racing Dad KIMBERLY J. BROWN | 56

A Baseball Story CLAIRE TAYLOR | 57

Stepping Aside PATRICK McGRAW | 59

Bonus Days AMY ZARANEK | 64

FICTION

Eye of the Storm BRETT BIEBEL | 20

A Real Humdinger KEITH BUZZARD | 22

Retaliation BRYAN ERWIN | 29

Trust Fall CHRIS BELDEN | 37

The Crash on Stadium Drive RICHARD MORIARTY | 63

INTERVIEW

with Maya Washington TERRY HORSTMAN | 48

BOOK REVIEW

Be Holding, by Ross Gay JALEN EUTSEY | 66

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Muscle Memory

While we mere mortals emerge from our COVID caves for second doses of a scientific serum and all its

promise, athletes around us are on the pitch, taking on normalcy, one small victory at a time. They are

playing again. We are watching again. But we too are leaving the couch, the treadmills, and the Pelotons

for the streets, maybe even rejoining our lawn bowling leagues (right, Terry?), and resuming...well,

summer.

All of the markers are back; playoffs for the winter sports seem firmly and fully formed.

Summer harbingers like the Kentucky Derby, the Masters, the Indy 500, all went off. MLS, NWSL, MLB,

and the WNBA are underway. Even the Olympics seem determined to prevail.

That determination, persistence, and recall is ever present in the work of Issue 4. With uncanny

consistency, the stories, essays, and poems show our bodies in motion and at play again. There is

competition with others, not just with self. We are the active participants again, not just the hazy lens of

memory or the gaze of spectator.

We are the living. We breathe. We work. We write. If we’re lucky, we repeat.

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A Fable About Streaks

ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO

During the hotter half of the year when

healthy enough to play, we watch Aaron

Judge’s truck axel arms dwarf and lever

a bat, proportions stark enough to distinguish

peripherally from the kitchen while

I smoke and burn rice hand fanning fumes

in belabored flaps at the window to

distinguish among the pinstripes thru mom’s

sight clouding in and out her nerves

snapping in the quake of a truck

driver sleep fallen mid route swerving into

our passenger side door and spinning us off

the interstate smacking into a snow

bank packed dense like drying concrete to

distinguish on a shoddy hospital

desktop monitor tv thru static

bleeding onto walls gowns curtains bedding

the sterile white and metal my sunken pale

ISSUE 4 | SUMMER 2021

8 SHAPIRO

dad’s jaundice complexions cast alike as

in health while he waits for the dead to leave

a liver he won’t take from us living

to distinguish a looping pitch snapping

a syrupy angled slice hundreds of

feet the opposite way to distinguish

thick piled muscle propelling his action

from the frailty of his mortal structure,

skeletal and tendinous connections

unable to compensate for the force

he generates.

MORAL:

We text commemoration for any

hit, lucky or driven, recognizing

a fit, utile body as fallible.

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Imaginary Fear

RHONDA ZIMLICH

Because multiple sclerosis (MS) is an erratic chronic illness affecting each person in a unique way, I cannot

say how mine is like yours or how it is different. I can tell you where I experience MS in my own body. I

have numbness in my legs and arms, mostly on my left side. I experience exacerbations that turn my knees

inward, collapsing my legs with the weight of my body as I try to walk, stifling my gait and shuffling my

feet. I have vertigo, though not often. I have cognitive delays, but who’s to say this isn’t because I am nearly

50 years old. All of my symptoms are mine, unique to my experience, shared by others but not everyone.

But there are parts of the MS experience which are universal. The first one I think of is fear.

I feel afraid that I will someday be unable to walk, or run, or dance. This fear imagines me reliant upon

someone else to do simple tasks. This fear sees me grow heavy and sedentary. And though some might be

afraid to lose their vision or the dexterity of their hands or bladder control, we all have fear. This is a

universal concern for us.

Perhaps fear is what fostered my desire to run long distances, though I could also argue that something

happens on a long run that becomes its own motivator. Let me see if I can capture the feeling:

I head out the door a little anxious, a little eager. I set my Strava app and Garmin watch because one shows

the world what I do and the other is just for me. I take a breath; this is intentional and pushes away the

fear of suffocation that haunts some of us. Lungs and other involuntary muscles have been known to just

stop for people with MS; the communication between the brain and muscles gets jumbled and wires are

crossed or connections are blocked. Short circuits are not limited to just ambulatory functions either.

Cognitive delays are also a concern. So I roll my neck as I walk to the end of the driveway. I connect my

thinking brain to my body. I stretch loosely, just my arms and shoulders. My running team jokes that only

newbies stretch legs before a run; stretching comes after, saved for moments of long savoring, free of

anticipation. Homage to the muscles that have carried us three, five, fifteen miles that day.

My first few steps find the rhythm and I glide into a pattern. Tap, tap, tap, tap. My arms swing with the

cadence of my footfalls. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. I feel the first few minutes in my lungs as they


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adjust to new requirements. More oxygen is needed; the body is asking; the heart pumps its reply to the

request. Within minutes, I have no awareness of anything besides my legs. As they warm, they reach, fall

and dig. It becomes a dance: reach, fall, and dig, each leg taking its turn like a tango on fast-forward.

Always the warmth is what registers first. Heat grows from my quads and calves meeting somewhere

along my buttocks, psoas, and shins, wrapping my legs in friction. I am aware of this temperature

adjustment, aware that I can still feel these legs, aware that there have been times when the numbness

erases my connection there. And still there are places along the map of my body where the heat does not

register. I catch a graze of something soft along my ankle and I fear my shoelace is not tight enough; half a

loop has come loose and is flapping along with each step. I venture a glance down, always a risk. My largest

lesion is near the c4 vertebra and I often induce tingling on my left side when I bend my neck to look down.

I feel a prickle in my hamstring on that side but nothing more. Good news is the shoes are both securely

tied. Maybe a leaf grazed me; maybe a phantom zing electrified my ankle. No need to stop, to stoop, to

start again. So I quicken my pace.

Start slow, I hear my coach say. This is the best way to ensure you’ll have some fuel in the tank for the

finish. But I have been indoors too long. I have been cooped up and need to push myself, extend my

distance. I need to know that I can still do this thing, this wonderful awakening that renews me each time I

quicken my pace.

The legs again call to me. I feel their strength as I near a small hill, taking its slope into my stride. My lungs

respond and increase the rate of oxygen. I huff and breathe, swing my arms faster and ask my legs to

oblige. The hill climbs me, not the other way around. It faces my challenge and, in response, I give it all I’ve

got. My heart is an audible drum guiding the orchestra of my body. All parts are in harmony and reach full

crescendo as I crest the hill and head down the other side.

And I love it. I love that feeling. Satori. Erudition. Enlightenment.

Here, along these miles and distances, I forget about fear. As long as I can still move in the ways that

remove me from myself, I am free. But once home, after a long run or even a short jog, I am left with me. I

come home to the fear that awaits. Will there be a next time? Will I have the courage or connection to try

again? The connection is what gets me. This is completely out of my control. I could wake up tomorrow

and have the whole thing dissolve like yesterday’s rain evaporating from the grass into ethereal mists that

rise into invisibility. I wonder, too, if that does happen, how much of the many miles I’ve run will be

forgotten by my thinking mind and by my muscle memory. Regardless of my triumphant run, fear always

re-enters my imagination.

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ZIMLICH 11

Fear is the most common manifestation of MS. Everyone who has MS has fear. We all wonder when the

time bomb we polish will blow. As I catch my breath, finally stretch those well-deserving muscles, finally

let the thoughts return, I am greeted by that familiar feeling. I feel it in my legs where I know persistent

numbness. I feel it in the tingling that begins when my head tilts forward to tie my shoes, glance at a crack,

bow in prayer. Two-hundred angry bees return to remind me that I have MS. But I breathe and stretch and

pray regardless. I remind myself that fear is either side of the same coin. One side is real fear, gripping the

throat and constricting the flow of air. This fear happens during a real threat and signals the body to take

action. The other side of the coin is imaginary fear, the fear that says my legs may someday stop. Someday.

The fear that imagines me in a wheelchair or sees me clutch my neck and pound my chest because my

lungs forgot to keep breathing. Imagined. My legs have not yet stopped. My lungs continue to pull in air.

This side of the coin of fear is the imaginary fear side, that haunts me more than the real fear side. But

because imagined fear is such a powerful tool, can’t I also use my imagination for good?

Today, I sit quiet with my eyes shut. I imagine the miles that stretch out from my position in all directions. I

can go out from here in any route I choose. I choose to see myself take the trolley trail behind the house,

follow it down into Bethesda and around the shops and National Institute of Health complex. The day is

sunny but I can do this imagination exercise even on a cloudy day or a rainy day—maybe especially on a

rainy day. I imagine myself strong and healthy, feel my legs pull at the earth with each step. I breathe in and

out as I visualize the run. I remind myself that even if I have to slow down or walk, I can do this. I can run as

long as I can still move these legs. Imaginary fear creeps in but I push it away with imaginary triumph; I feel

the rewards of my success, imagine the feeling of cresting that hill and heading downward toward home,

see the last sprint as I return to my street, driveway, front door. I take in the feeling, now radiating from my

chest. A successful run. Now, I am ready to begin.


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Learning to Dunk

CHRIS ABBATE

I guaranteed my friend I’d do it within a year.

I must have been feeling my oats, as my parents said,

or flirting with the deadly sin of pride, as my teachers warned.

But wasn’t that the point? To defy my natural boundaries,

to crack the secret domain of God,

the hallowed air of the ten-foot-high rim?

A boy is nothing unless he is functional,

a man in training who can run and lift and jump.

For years, as if on instinct, I had been grazing ceiling tiles

with my fingertips, slapping door lintels with my palms.

I began to lose interest in basketball the first time I fell in love.

Funny, this falling I embraced, the inverse of pride, the ground taken out from under me.

But even this felt like flying, the only dream I can remember,

the one where I propel myself over treetops simply by kicking my feet.

Today, I resisted the urge to jump and touch an exit sign.

I recalled the boy I lost, still learning to dunk, still hoping to fall.

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God, Bowling

CHRIS ABBATE

When the thunderclap was a cosmic crash, when it shook

the foundation of the house until the vibration rippled upstairs

to the room my brother and I shared,

we called it a strike.

And when it sounded like a train that had passed,

a rumbling in the distance, the sky merely clearing its throat,

we admitted that even God sometimes threw a gutter ball.

The only picture of my grandfather I remember

is of him in a suit and tie holding a bowling ball to his heart,

eyeing pins at the end of a lane.

His obituary from 1959 read, Giuseppe Stefano, Expert Duckpin Bowler;

not what my mother had told me about him –

farmer, immigrant, factory worker, gardener –

but rather, what I imagined him to be –

herder of storm clouds, gatherer of sky,

hands that make thunder.


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Take One

ERIN HILL

A spindly-legged string bean, I stand in the batter’s box and the count is full. My local automotive-shopsponsored

team uniform is cheap and ill-fitting; my polyester shorts are scratchy and riding up; my red

mesh hat is boxy and unbroken. I look to the third base coach, my dad, for direction. Counting on the wild

inaccuracy of most fifth-grade pitchers, he tells me to take one.

I take a massive swing at a pitch high and outside for strike three.

As we walk to the dugout, Dad looks confused and I look embarrassed. I hate disappointing him (still do).

“What happened? I thought I told you to take one?”

“I did take one! I took a huge swing!”

“What? No, take one means take a pitch. Don’t swing. Make the pitcher throw a strike!”

“How was I supposed to know that??”

After ten years of baseball in the background of our lives, I’d somehow missed this jargon. I didn’t yet

know our family’s unspoken philosophy: take one – and then swing away.

***

Twice divorced, Grandma Doris lived alone my entire life. She didn’t go to church, but she knew devotion,

and her devotion was to the Cincinnati Reds.

At Grandma’s house: National Geographics on her built-ins, an electronic organ in her living room, an

adding machine in her office, gems in her jewelry box, a bar in her basement. Wall-to-wall carpet and air

conditioning and the kind of mid-century modern furniture we die for today.

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Marty (Brennaman) and Joe (Nuxhall) on the radio.

She was a full count of delicious contradictions. Impeccably dressed, hair done, red lipstick, compact at the

ready, she smoked Virginia Slims and had the raspiest voice I’d ever heard and the most liberated

cacophonous cackle of a laugh – one that just did not square with such an otherwise refined image (I

inherited the same cackle). These ostentations annoyed my mother, but they fascinated me. Only now as

an adult woman do I understand why I watched Grandma so carefully, with such curiosity. I didn’t know it

at the time, but she was my coach too.

Doris Burton knew how to take a pitch.

Some coaches would describe taking a pitch simply as deliberate inaction.

Take one too often, and you become passive. Hesitant. Inert.

Some coaches would describe taking a pitch as a smart, patient strategy. Taking a pitch means you’re

willing to watch and wait. It means you know how to size up the pitcher. You know how to anticipate. You

play the odds. And you take your swing when the time is right.

In 1945, Grandma’s big brother Dee was killed by a sniper on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, six

weeks before the war ended. She watched the war reports. She waited for him to come home. He didn’t.

In early 1953, Grandma and her first husband divorced; my dad was twelve and my aunt was ten. Grandpa

moved to Michigan to work for the Detroit Free Press. Over the holidays that year, Dad took a Greyhound

bus north to spend a few days with him. They went to the Lions game against the Browns; my 80-year-old

father still remembers the score was 17-16 Lions. After that visit, no one heard from Grandpa again for

twenty-five years. She watched; she waited – for contact, for child support. Neither came.

In 1958, she married again and divorced five years later.

In my mind, I can hear her saying, “Well, enough of all that!” She started taking her swings.

By the year 1980, when I was five, she had been working as a bookkeeper and office manager for 30 years.

She had been flying solo for nearly 20 of those years, and it seemed pretty glamorous to me. This woman

owned her own home, took care of business, rarely suffered fools, and did what she damn well pleased,


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even if it didn’t square with traditional notions of femininity. I knew her only in her Swing Away years, and

this gave me a deep understanding of what it meant to live joyfully as an independent woman.

She bowled regularly with her girlfriends and was the commissioner of several local leagues. In 1985, she

was inducted to the Springfield-Clark County Ohio US Bowling Congress Hall of Fame.

Once she retired, she made the 90-minute drive down to Cincinnati for home games seven to ten times a

season. Always by herself: beer, score card, sunshine, Ohio River just on the horizon.

She joined the Rosie Reds – Rooters Organized to Stimulate Interest and Enthusiasm in the Cincinnati

Reds – a philanthropic and social organization that supports youth and college baseball in the city.

We went to Reds games together as a family – Dad, Mom, Grandma, and I – where there were nonnegotiable

traditions: you took your glove, you paid attention, you scored the game. When I chose my

favorite player, Grandma and Dad both approved; Eric Davis was in the 40-40 club. I came home with a

poster, added a huge wad of chewing gum to my batting practice ritual, and started swinging

indiscriminately at every ball that came my way.

On special occasions, I was allowed to spend the night at Grandma’s. She let me play with everything at

her house – the adding machine, the costume jewelry, the organ. In the summer, I ran around outside or

swam in the neighbor’s pool. When we came back to the house and I was crispy from the chlorine and the

sun, we stepped down into the cool, dark basement. I stared at all the Cincinnati Reds memorabilia on the

walls behind the bar—heavy on Tony Perez, her favorite player—while Grandma made me a plate of cold

fried chicken and potato chips. She always let me have a small juice glass of beer with my late lunch, and

forty years later, this is still my favorite summer afternoon meal.

***

Playing softball taught me the importance of finding my fit: I wasn’t fast and I didn’t have much of an arm. I

was too skinny to throw with any kind of velocity, but I was consistent and reliable. I was a decent second

baseman; I could make the stops, and I always knew where my first and second plays were. As I grew taller

and slower, a better fit emerged: I had long arms and legs and could stretch from the first-base bag like a

champ.

In the batter’s box, I figured out that skinny didn’t matter; it was all about timing. I was patient, and I could

wait for my pitch.

I’ve taken a pitch or two since: jobs and partners and cities that weren’t quite right.

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HILL 17

And then I swung away—and connected with a life I’d always imagined. I’m a writer and educator flying

solo in a quirky little Ohio town full of other artists. I have lovely neighbors and even better friends. At my

house: books on my built-ins, paintings and collages and rough drafts in my studio, a make-shift bar on my

back patio.

And until he retired last year, Marty on the radio.

From March to September, if it’s not raining, I’m working out in the yard or the garden, the Reds on an old

transistor radio I bought at a brick-and-mortar RadioShack. On free summer afternoons, I’ll drive down to

Cincinnati for a day game. One colleague became a best friend when we discovered a shared love of

baseball. The first Mother’s Day after my mom died, she and her wife went to the game with Dad and me.

Five years later, he said that was one of his favorite days at the ballpark, and for Christmas, he gave me

three front-row-seats-down-the-first-base-line tickets: one for me, one for my friend, one for her wife.

“Make sure you tell them how much I enjoyed that game together,” he said.

Every year on Grandma’s birthday, March 27, I renew my Rosie Reds membership. I dress up for the day,

no matter what’s on my agenda. I download the season schedule and write all the day games and home

series on my summer calendar; I highlight away games that have the best road trip potential—priority on

parks I haven’t yet visited. I listen to a spring training game on the trusty transistor, and I have cold fried

chicken and beer for dinner.


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Church Softball

RYAN HARPER

Those nights it was all right

to be in league with Presbyterians,

Dad said. We always went along

because the ball fields had

concessions (every Christian liked hot dogs,

Dad said). With ecumenical relish

green upon my lips, I skipped

mitt-first and tripping willfully

behind the dugouts with the sons

of half-correct sectarian shortstops

and way-out left fielders

whom Dad and the deacons would beat that night.

Far behind the fence in foul ground,

we rolled, ran up the pile

of extra infield dirt, around

the backstop, through pick-up

games with tennis balls

and broomsticks—Canseco versus

A-Rod versus Clemens (not yet

at the age of accountability,

these names we injected

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into our contests naturally)—

schisms of bean balls,

close plays, and sola scriptura synods

of pouty player-umpires. All

the while, wives and mothers attended

the games, seated in one long row

just behind the fence, pillows

of flesh squeezing between the straining

crossed fabric of their lawn chairs. They

laughed and clapped together while sons

and fathers, each invisible to the other,

decided who was safe and who was out.


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Eye of the Storm

BRETT BIEBEL

This is unverified. You should know that going in. There’s some fragmentary evidence, of course, mostly

archived web pages and bootleg videos and such, but the rest is basically hearsay and whole cloth

invention, and it all involves this Grinnell grad from the 1990s, a guy by the name of Goins. He had an

obsession with D3 basketball. Used to drive all across the Midwest with a handheld camera, and one night

he’s up in the middle of nowhere Minnesota, and St. John’s beats St. Thomas at the buzzer, and half a

dozen monks and a few hundred students storm the court. The monks look dignified. The students look

drunk. And nobody’s seen the footage, but apparently this becomes like a formative event or something

because all of a sudden the only thing Goins cares about is court-storming. Empty bleachers. Crowds

sucked into midcourt and sweat and popcorn and boiler heat all fucking mixed together in a nothing town,

and there’s something different about non-scholarship celebrations, something more abandoned.

Meaner. Urgent and unpredictable and frenzied, and it’s like a certain kind of pornography, and now it’s

Goins on a quest. Goins on the road. Goins in Moorhead and Mt. Vernon and Kenosha and praying he can

capture something spasmodic and violent and exhilarating, and he surfs rivalry games. Massey ratings.

Sagarin, etc. He understands that hatred and improbability are the drivers of cataclysmic celebration, and

there are moments when he doesn’t know if he’s after the ecstasy or the catharsis or maybe the potential

for a Hillsborough-type tragedy, and obviously most of the time he doesn’t get any of that (or even a

particularly good game), but he always lucks into at least one or two storms and then finds a few more in

late February and early March, and as the years go by he develops a kind of system. A feel. He thinks

about matchup history and bad blood and conference standings (as well as local and national events,

about socioeconomics and town-and-gown dynamics), and eventually it all gets pretty sophisticated.

Algorithms are involved. He can tell you within a few percentage points either way the chance that any

particular game ends in a court storm, and he starts a blog about it. Solicits donations. Doesn’t get many.

But there’s a following. The nichiest of athletic niches, and there’s some micro targeted ad revenue, but

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mostly Goins just goes a little nuts and takes out a loan. Hires a few assistants. Sends them out west. He

manages to catch a few extra court storms a year, and the videos don’t exactly light up the internet, but

there is a market, and pretty soon Goins (who by this point has started drinking pretty heavily and become

obsessed with a creepy form of underground fame) is a known quantity. A pseudo-celebrity. He’s an injoke

for message board denizens and assistant coaches and desperate alumni, and some of these people

start showing up in the videos. They wait until the court storm’s moved to the second act, and then they

find the guy with the camera. You can’t miss him. It’s almost always Goins himself. They stand in front of

the lens and make faces. Hold signs. And Goins cuts around them pretty good, but he doesn’t eliminate

them completely (probably on account of he likes the attention (or the acknowledgement anyway)), and so

these guys (and it’s always mostly guys), they send the link around. Have their own little moment of lookat-me

minor fame, and it doesn’t end there either because even though Goins never publishes his location

(part of the mystery, he liked to say), a few enterprising fans replicate his algorithm and are then able to

guess, with alarming accuracy, where he and/or his staff might be on any given night, and then they just

spread the word on campus. They storm the court no matter what. Win or lose, and the whole thing

becomes orchestrated but no less interesting (though certainly interesting for different reasons), and this

goes on for a while until one night, at Gustavus (they say) or Augustana or Wartburg or La Crosse (and

maybe it’s a regional final or else a mere conference championship), the host team wins it late, and the

whole thing is ripe for adrenaline. For revelry. It’s classic textbook court-storm time, and instead what

happens is a race to the bleachers. To the camera. It’s all lost footage unfortunately, but word is it’s a

jumbled mess and mostly just shaking and the rustle of fabric, and Goins is under there somewhere, and

he’s sweating. Breathing. The chanting around him is rhythmic and sort of primally deep, and the only

surefire fact is someday somebody’s gonna find that tape, and it’ll be palsied and magnetic. By far the

most explosive little dancehall yet.


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A Real Humdinger

KEITH BUZZARD

“Well, folks, if you’re just joining us, we’re at the bottom of the third inning here at Parasol

Stadium and you could not ask for a better day for baseball, wouldn’t you say, Alan?”

“That’s right, Paul. Just a real ‘beaut’ of a day. Though I am worried about this weather delay.”

“Is that what you’d call it, Alan? A weather delay?”

“I’m not sure what else to call it to be perfectly honest, Paul. It’s still just...hanging there. The

only way I could wrap my head around it is to call it a weather delay of some kind.”

“Well, what kind of weather would you call this, Alan?”

“I don’t know, Paul. I’m just trying to avoid filling my underpants from sheer existential terror,

not to put too fine a point on it, Paul.”

“For all you folks out there in radioland, what my co-announcer is referring to as a ‘weather

delay’ is what I’d be more like to call some sort of slap in the face to physics. Not more than twenty

minutes ago, Adrian Potemkin, whose been having a real Cinderella story revival on the back end of this

season-”

“Oh, to be sure, Paul. If we compare his batting average for the first three months of the season

to his batting average of the past three weeks, he’s like a totally new player. I’m sure the manager,

Deshawn Kiske, was like, ‘Where’s this guy been?’”

“Without a doubt, Alan. I’m sure no one was as surprised as Deshawn Kiske, and I’m confident

he’d be the first one to admit it. But to be honest, I’m not sure, and I’m speaking personally now, if I’ll ever

be confident in anything ever again. My very notion of reality has been called into question. Not twenty

minutes ago, Adrian Potemkin, who’s been batting at an impressive .415 over the past 30 at-bats,

connected with low-inside slider from Ryan Carmichael-”

“Which is equally impressive. That slider has just been devastating the Cobra’s lineup this game.”

“Undeniable, Alan. Undeniable. Potemkin connected with a low-inside slider, sending it just over

shortstop Jimmy Adamson’s head, where it suddenly… Well, folks, it just suddenly stopped in mid air,

calling into question everything this announcer’s ever known about the concept of physics.”

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“That’s right, Paul. For the past, oh, 18 minutes or so the ball has been suspended in mid-air, an

affront to God and all that is holy.”

“Bringing God into it, Alan?”

“I don’t think God is anywhere near this place, Paul. I’m beginning to question any and all

preconceptions I’ve ever held up to this point. If the irrefutable laws of physics are no longer in play, well,

what does that say about things as ethereal as notions of good and evil?”

“That’s a real humdinger of a question, Alan. Here’s our producer, Jerry Scaccia… Folks, we’ve

just gotten word from Jerry, who just celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary by the way,

congratulations to him and his lovely wife Samantha, many happy returns, that the ball suspended in midair

is slowly rotating and that a low, ominous rumbling is emanating from the ball. What do you make of

that, Alan?”

“I just want to go home and tell my cat I love him, Paul.”

“Fair enough, Alan. Fair enough. For all of you tuning in to our coverage, allow me to describe

the scene on the field.”

“My cat’s been sick lately and I’m filled with regret for all the time I wasted on this earth.”

“Aren’t we all, Alan. Aren’t we all. Folks, members from both the Panthers and the Cobras have

abandoned their positions on the field or on the bench to gather near the levitating orb, others are

keeping their distance from it. Adrian Potemkin is on his knees, arms wrapped around himself, and rocking

back and forth. It’s a bit hard to make out from this distance, but it appears that his shoulders are shaking.

If this announcer had to make a guess, I would say that he is weeping for the loss of humanity’s innocence.”

“I think that’s a fair assessment, Paul. It looks like the Panther’s manager, Ryan Wizniak, is

having words with the head umpire, and he does not look happy. He’s gesturing between the rotating

sphere and Potemkin. It looks like he’s saying that the ball is out of play and that Potemkin should be out.

I’m not sure how they’ll rule this one on the field, Paul.”

“I’m not sure either, Alan, but I’m not surprised that when confronted with the breakdown of

reality that some men will still cling to their limited experiences as a way of coping with their sudden

insignificance when faced with things their minds simply cannot comprehend.”

“Which reminds me, Paul. Folks, this inning has been brought to you by Jormundsen’s Franks. If

it’s not a Jormundsen’s sausage, it’s not baseball. And also, by Trial by Fire. The only thing hotter than the stakes,

are the lawyers. New season starts Friday at nine.”

“Oh, I love that show.”

“I love those franks.”

“Back to the action. It looks like shortstop Jimmy Adamson is getting on the shoulders of center

fielder David Anthony-”


24

“Not sure how good an idea that is, with Anthony’s recent rotator cuff surgery.”

“Excellent point, Alan. It appears that Adamson is trying to grab onto the ball.”

“That would help with his error rate, should he pull it off.”

“They’re at the ball. Adamson is reaching towards it… He’s motioning for someone to give him

his glove, smart move. I wouldn’t want to touch it with my bare hands either. And… he’s got it, folks! He has

his glove completely around the ball. But it looks like…”

“It looks like he’s having trouble pulling it down, Paul. He’s putting all his weight on it but it’s still

stuck in the air. Oh, Anthony is down! Looks like Adamson threw him off balance and Adamson is now

hanging from the suspended ball in his glove. He’s just hanging there like a christmas stocking full of candy

canes and lotto scratchers.”

“That looks like smoke coming from his glove, Alan. Yes, it appears that the ball has burned

through Adamson’s glove and he has fallen to the ground like a sack of potatoes, folks. That ball must be

hotter than a two dollar pistol.”

“Hotter than the lawyers on Trial by Fire, Paul?”

“Oh, not possible, Alan. Trial by Fire, Fridays at nine, folks.”

“I think I’m beginning to hear that ominous rumbling that our producer, Jerry Scaccia, was

talking about. Let me tell you, it is chilling to hear, folks. Is this the same ominous rumbling you were

referring to, Jerry?”

“I don’t think he can hear you, Alan. It looks like Jerry is huddled up in the corner praying.”

“Here’s a question for you, Paul. Do you think praying is going to do any good in this situation?”

“That’s a tough question, Alan. It’s hard to believe that there is a God in a situation like this. If

there is, then either they aren’t hearing Jerry’s prayers or they’re completely indifferent to them. Either

way, the Panthers are going to have a real humdinger of a time trying to put out Adamson, who has just

burst into flames, like a billy goat with a blowtorch.”

“Now, do you think this is the orb punishing Adamson for grabbing it, or did the burning glove

just coincidentally catch his uniform?”

“Hard to believe in a coincidence at this point, Alan. The head umpire is batting at the flames

with his chest protector and the other players are attempting to suffocate the flames by kicking dirt on

them. And it looks like that did the trick, the flames are out, ladies and gentleman.”

“That’s some good luck for the Panthers, Paul. With Josh Snader already out with that torn

meniscus, they’d be hard pressed to replace Adamson at this point in the season.”

“That is true, Alan. Though they’ve had luck with the farm teams in the past. They picked up Mac

Hartyl two seasons back and he’s been a stalwart of left field ever since.”

“That’s for sure. Say, have you ever seen so many crows circling in one place before, Paul?”

THE UNDER REVIEW

BUZZARD 25

“Can’t say that I have, Alan. Can’t say that I have. Truly a foreboding omen if this announcer’s

ever seen one. Here’s a fun fact for all of our listeners out there, a group of crows is called a congress.”

“Now that’s interesting, Paul. I always thought it was a murder of crows.”

“Well, the two terms are interchangable, but I was trying to avoid using the word murder for

what I thought would be obvious reasons. I thought that a little bit of linguistics fun would help keep

things light for our listeners, you know, in the face of our current situation.”

“I hear you, Here’s what I don’t understand, Paul, and let me know if I’m off-base with this.”

“Hey-ohhh.”

“Thought you might like that one. Anyhoo, here’s what I’m trying to wrap my head around.”

“Alright, shoot.”

“Now, walk with me on this one. You got your sports journalism degree from Boltech University,

right?”

“Sure did. Go Wildcats.”

“So you’re familiar with the first law of thermodynamics, right?”

“The Law of Conservation of Energy, sure.”

“Right. So if energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed or changed from one

form to another, could we just be seeing the ball’s energy changing from kinetic to some heretofore

unseen form of gravitational potential energy?”

“Hmm. That’s an interesting point you bring up, Alan, but I don’t think that accounts for the

apocalyptic chanting I’m hearing in my mind.”

“Oh, you’re hearing it, too, then? For a second I thought I might have been imagining it. What do

you suppose that is? Latin?”

“Well, I’m not sure how I know this, but it feels a heck of a lot older than Latin, if you can imagine

that. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a language never before heard by humans, Alan. Something that was never

meant for human-”

“Paul, hate to cut you off, but looks like there’s some kind of development down on the field.

Folks, from up here it looks like some kind of visible energy has begun pulsating out of the ball. I’d say it’s

pulsating at about three second intervals and each successive wave is traveling further away from the ball.

It’s hit the players now and down they go, shaking like bacon in a frying pan.”

“That next wave just hit the stands, Alan. Dollars to donuts, I’d say the next wave hits us up here

in the booth.”

“I’d say you're right, Paul. Annnd here it is.”

“Holy cow. How would you describe what just happened, Alan?”


26 BUZZARD

“Well, Paul, I don’t know about you, but I saw a vision of me taking the same bite out of my dying

cat over and over, stretching out into eternity.”

“That’s a real humdinger of a vision, Alan.”

“How about you, Paul? What did the visions show you?”

“Well, Alan, I was ushered to the very furthest shore of sanity by an unfathomable monstrosity

who showed me how the universe was born from nothing and how it craves to return to nothing. It craves

for that and only one other thing.”

“What’s that, Paul?”

“Jormundsen’s Franks. Got a hankerin’ for a frank? Grab a Jormundsen’s.”

“Looks like we have some commotion down on the field. The players have returned to their feet

and are embracing each other, as if they have overcome their petty differences and have reached a mutual

understanding of not only themselves, but of each other.”

“You love to see it, folks. You really do.”

“The ball is now glowing. How would you describe that color, Paul?”

“I can’t rightly say I’ve ever seen a color like that. Just another thing about this that defies all

logic, Alan. It’s glowing brighter and brighter and it… is… outta here! Straight out of this plane of existence.

Where it went, who’s to say, folks. All I can tell you is, this announcer is left with more questions than he

came here with.”

“And it looks like the ruling on the field is a ground rule double, which seems fair to me.”

“Hard to argue with that call, Alan.”

“So with Potemkin on second, up to bat is Alexei Sutter. Now Carmichael, historically, has had

trouble using that slider with left-handed batters.”

“And that’s a real blindspot, Alan. A walk at this point could put the Cobras in scoring position to

take the lead.”

THE UNDER REVIEW

27

Rinky Dink

JESSICA GREGG

In his country, hockey players never fought.

It was in his gait, the upright stride that made him

taller than his teammates bent fist first over

their work at this patchy puddle jump, this

hose-flooded slick chute muted by speckled light.

Back when America was faded-jean beauty. Majestic loud.

Back when we were world’s forest and former factory,

and we smelled like dirt and pine needles. Aspiration

and gasoline. Chewed-down lipstick and French fries.

We never learned to say his name right.

He never grew tall enough to be a statue.

Yet blade to blue block to goal fest, it was glory

enough in a podium-stand collection of intramural medals.

Then the season ended. He couldn’t pack the trophies,

take the girlfriend who never learned his words

or prove the legends he knew to be true.

Now his hands itched to blunt and beat,

to make blood drip from the broken noses of fat

American boys and watch it bounce on ratty,

pock-marked ice that reeked of March.


28

David

ANDREW GENT

Michelangelo’s David and the baseball pitcher

have a lot in common.

That fraction of a second

when the mind goes

blank: you don’t know

how you got here, or what it was

you meant to do.

The same fraction

of a second the flash goes off,

someone screams “Surprise!” and you are

caught: permanently off-balance,

holding you-don’t-know-what

while the man in front of you wields a mallet of some kind

waiting to strike.

THE UNDER REVIEW

29

Retaliation

BRYAN ERWIN

“Townie, you’re up,” the Blue Jays’ bullpen coach said.

Ryan Townsend threw one last fastball to the bullpen catcher, whose name he did not yet know, then

stepped off the mound. The view from the Blue Jays’ bullpen was similar to the one from the visitors’ side,

but just different enough to be slightly disorienting. He had a lot to learn about Toronto and Toronto about

him. For instance, no one ever called him “Townie”.

Before he stepped through the bullpen gate, Ryan took a breath to steel himself. There were going to be

boos, perhaps ones as merciless as he heard the previous night, when Ryan was a member of the

Minnesota Twins.

He’d thrown at Arturo Stone, the Blue Jays’ star outfielder, triggering a bench clearing brawl. The only

grievous injury in the fight was to Ryan’s jersey, which was de-buttoned near his navel. Shortly after his

ejection, Ryan learned the Twins had traded him. Worse, they’d sent him to the team he’d just finished

exchanging punches with.

Now he was in a Blue Jays jersey, which didn’t feel right. Maybe it was that he’d never worn a professional

uniform unrelated to the Twins; maybe it was the insultingly high number 84 on the back. That was the

kind of number assigned to a spring training non-roster invitee, not a five year veteran like Ryan.

Granted, he had not been good that season. After multiple years as a successful setup man for Minnesota,

his slider had lost its snap. He blew leads in three consecutive appearances in April and hadn’t sniffed a

competitive game since. He became the mop-up guy, the person who came in when the Twins faced an

insurmountable deficit and didn’t want to waste one of the good arms in their bullpen.


30

Bring on the boos, Ryan thought as he stopped on to the artificial turf warning track at the Rogers Centre.

He kept his head down as he jogged in from left field. He didn’t look up as he passed Arturo Stone, now his

teammate. He waited for the jeers to hit him. They did not.

Canadians, he tried to tell himself, so polite. But he had a suspicion it wasn’t that. It was more likely

staggering indifference. People knew there’d been an incident the day before, but did they bother to

remember the name of the middling reliever who started it? Evidently not.

In a way, he would have preferred the boos.

His new manager and catcher were waiting for him on the mound. The manager was a grizzled 72 year old

named Herman Blackburn. A wad of tobacco puffed out his left cheek. He spit; the turf did not absorb the

output as quickly as a grass field, leaving a brown splotch near Blackburn’s feet.

“Hey, we go one for fastball, two for slider, three for change,” the catcher said. “You got anything else you

like to throw?”

Ryan was relieved that the catcher didn’t seem to hold a grudge against him. No one had spoken to him in

the clubhouse, not even Marvin Walker, who’d played with Ryan in Minnesota for a couple of years. The

bullpen didn’t exactly exclude him from their conversation, but he couldn’t follow it. The Blue Jays’ relief

corps had a language of their own, just as the Twins’ did.

“Don’t worry about any of that today,” Blackburn said. “He’s gonna hit this guy and probably get tossed.”

Ryan glanced at the plate. Ben Brennan - “BB” - was up. He couldn’t hit BB. The guy had come up through

the Twins’ organization with Ryan, catching him since rookie ball. There was no one in baseball Ryan

trusted more than BB.

The day before, they hadn’t even had to discuss what Ryan was going to throw to (or, more precisely, at)

Arturo Stone. BB set up on the inside of the plate. This would allow Ryan to plausibly claim that, yes, he

was throwing inside and the pitch got away from him. Ryan gave BB a slow nod, which was all the signal BB

needed to know that the pitch would not be anywhere near his glove.

THE UNDER REVIEW

ERWIN 31

Blackburn handed the ball to Ryan who gripped it just enough to avoid dropping it. He stared past his

manager and catcher, watching BB slice his bat through the air with a practice swing.

Ryan generally deferred to his manager and coaches. He’d yet to play for a team where the staff was less

experienced than him. Even when he was relegated to mop-up duty, he didn’t try to plead his case. If he

wanted to be the setup man again, he’d have to work harder to find that slider and earn his spot back.

He didn’t want Herman Blackburn to think he was the kind of guy who didn’t carry out orders. Still, that

was BB up there.

“Why?” Ryan said.

“Why what?”

“Why am I hitting B…this guy?”

Blackburn lowered his head like a disappointed kindergarten teacher.

“They hit our guy, now we have to hit their guy.”

The logic was sound. In any other situation, Ryan would have readily agreed with Blackburn. But this time

was a little different.

“They didn’t hit our guy. I did.”

“But you were them then.”

“And now I’m us. So who am I sending a message to, myself?”

“No, you’re—”

Blackburn took a step back, removed his hat and wiped his forehead.


32

“Christ, next time we gotta make sure we aren’t trading for one of these intellectuals.”

He said it under his breath, but not really.

“Look, you know how this goes. A team hits us, we hit them back. Ledger has to be even.”

“I know, but their guy – sorry, our guy – charged the mound. That’s equal to hitting one of their guys.”

Blackburn stared Ryan down for a moment, turning his chaw over in his mouth. He looked like he

regretted bringing Ryan in as much as Ryan did.

“Don’t you think so?” Ryan said, turning to the catcher to appeal. It was a risky move, but if anyone was

going to side with a pitcher, it was the guy catching him.

“I don’t know, I just wanted to go over the signs.”

“You want to take a poll?” Blackburn said. “We’ve got time.”

He motioned the infielders to the mound. The second baseman and shortstop jogged in, the corner

infielders walked. Ryan put his hands on his hips.

“Fellas, our pitcher thinks he shouldn’t have to throw at one of their guys after last night’s little dust up.

Says that clearing the benches cleans the slate. What do we think?”

The infielders looked around at each other, each of them waiting for someone else to talk first.

“I was in the can when the whole thing went down,” the shortstop said. “I heard a commotion, but I still had

to pull up my pants. I skipped washing my hands, but I didn’t get out there in time to even point and yell at

anyone. So I’d still like to hit a guy.”

“Yeah, no one got a punch in,” Milt Collier, the muscular first baseman who’d twice tagged Ryan for home

runs that season, said. “I pulled a button off someone’s jersey and ate it, but that was it.”

THE UNDER REVIEW

ERWIN 33

Ryan momentarily forgot his conundrum. He stared at Collier, riveted, as if he hadn’t seen him dozens of

times before.

“You ate the button?”

“Yeah. Love doing that. It’s like, I took this and the only way you’re getting it back is to comb through my--“

“Okay, I get it. That can’t be good for you, though.”

“Well, I swallowed it whole, didn’t chew it. It’s about the size of a multivitamin so no big deal.”

Collier curled his index finger into the pad of his thumb to make a small circle in illustration. Ryan started

to worry about the last year and a half of his contract, which the Blue Jays now owned. What was he

dealing with here?

“That button is the property of the Minnesota Twins.”

Collier shrugged, thoroughly unmoved.

“Maybe if they didn’t employ guys who threw at people for no reason they wouldn’t have lost it.”

“It wasn’t for no reason,” Ryan said.

If he’d taken a second to think things through, he wouldn’t have said it. This was no way to prepare for a

relief appearance. But occasionally he did things as instinctually as sticking his glove out to snag a liner

back to the box.

“Hitting a home run’s not a reason,” Collier said.

“No, but he stood at the plate after he hit it. Stood there for 1.8 seconds. We timed it in the bullpen. You

know you can’t let that go.”

“One point eight seconds, big deal,” Collier said. “That’s like one Mississipp—"


34

“Actually, it’s more like one-Mississippi, two-Mississipp-“

“No, 1.8 is less than two seconds. You can’t count two if it’s less than two seconds.”

“But two is really the beginning of the second second. The number plus Mississippi is one second. One-

Mississippi – that’s one second.”

“See what I said?” Blackburn said, taking a step back to talk to the catcher. “We’ve got Baseball Einstein

over here. Better not bring any books in my clubhouse. Magazines either. Unless they’re dirty.”

The second baseman and third baseman counted on their fingers, mouthing the numbers as they went.

The second baseman looked up in amazement almost immediately, though the third baseman shook his

head and went through the exercise again.

“He’s right,” the second baseman said. “Look at this.”

He counted to ‘five-Mississippi’ for the benefit of the group, all of whom, save for Collier and Blackburn,

gave excited nods as if they were encountering a heretofore unknown species.

“Man, I’ve got to re-think so many assumptions,” the third baseman said.

“It doesn’t matter!” Collier said. “Even if it is one-Mississippi, two-Mississipp-, that’s still not very long. Not

worth throwing at someone over.”

His teammates nodded in agreement. Ryan let his hand twist from side to side in what he hoped was a kind

of gentle dissent.

“Stoner’s your teammate now,” Collier said. “You’ve got to stand up for him. Show them that the Blue Jays

don’t let people throw at them.”

“But I’m the one who—”

THE UNDER REVIEW

ERWIN 35

He let out a frustrated sigh. He couldn’t go through the whole explanation again. He needed to take

another tack.

“Look, we’re only down two. Is putting a guy on here really the best move?”

“This is the spot to retaliate,” Blackburn said, his tone leaving little room for compromise. He locked eyes

with Ryan, who looked away first.

“Let me help you with your decision,” Blackburn said. “You don’t want to hit your buddy? Fine. But don’t

expect anyone on this team to talk to you. Whether you’re in the dugout, the bullpen, the clubhouse, the

bus, the plane – silence. When we’re on the road, you will go to dinner alone. During batting practice, you’ll

shag balls in left field all by yourself. When you blow a game, I won’t tell the press that you had good stuff

but just missed your location by a hair on one or two pitches.

“You understand what I’m saying to you?”

Ryan squeezed his lips together like he was trying to keep a particularly pesky bug from getting in his

mouth. He averted his eyes from Blackburn, but everywhere he turned a Blue Jay stared at him. These

were his teammates now. BB was not.

The umpire arrived, his stroll there so casual Ryan wondered if he’d stopped to pick up dinner along the

way.

“All right, let’s get this moving, fellas,” the umpire said. If he detected any tension in the meeting, he didn’t

say so.

“Sorry, blue,” Blackburn said, suddenly sounding as perky as someone a quarter his age. “New guy, just

making sure we’re all on the same page.”

He smiled at the ump, then turned back to Ryan.

“Go get ‘em, new guy.”


36 ERWIN

The umpire started back for the plate, the catcher beside him. Ryan was alone on the mound. He was in

full control of what happened next. He, and he alone, determined where the ball went.

BB stepped into the batter’s box. The catcher crouched, setting up on the inside of the plate. Plausible

deniability. Ryan was going to have to decide.

His eyes flickered between his new catcher and BB. BB’s bat danced up and down behind him, his eyes

locked on Ryan. Ryan gave a slow nod.

He wound up, stepped forward and released the ball.

THE UNDER REVIEW

37

Trust Fall

CHRIST BELDEN

We were out in the backyard, Richie and I, playing badminton. The boundaries were a couple of trees, a

stone walkway, and the edge of the brick patio. I was twelve and my brother fifteen. I don’t know why I was

playing with him, given how competitive he could be, how ruthless and cruel. I’d wanted to go to the

library, but he badgered me until I gave in. He called me a bookworm and said I was afraid he’d kick my ass.

All true. He always won, and not once did he take it easy on me. If I was stuck way over on one side of the

court, he would line drive the shuttlecock into the grass at the other end, raise his arms, and crow like

Jimmy Connors at the U.S. Open. When I won the occasional point, he’d curse and swing his racquet at an

imaginary version of his little brother—swish swish swish, and I was dead. Once, after I’d struggled to win

three points in a row, he launched his racquet at a tree and cracked it in half. Good thing the badminton set

came with four racquets because he broke another one by pounding it on the ground after I’d tied him at

15. He beat me 21-15 that day after digging out the one remaining racquet from the closet.

Today I was down 16-1, and Richie beamed with his typical combination of glee, superiority, and contempt.

This being September, the sun had already made its rapid early-evening slide behind the house. Inside, our

parents sat in the kitchen with their after-dinner drinks, and I could easily imagine them snorting,

between sips, at their older boy’s triumphant outbursts:

“Yes!”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

“You suck!”

Richie had won ten volleys in a row. But this time, after he served, I lunged and barely popped the birdie

back over the net, and it landed in-bounds. 2-16.

“You got lucky!”


38

My serve. I was pretty good at it, when I got the chance. I rarely hit the net or served out of bounds. Richie

stood near the net, ready to slam the birdie back at me, possibly directly at my face—one of his favorite

strategies. It’s hard to return a shot aimed between your eyes.

I hit a pop-up over Richie’s head, and he had to hustle. He got to it and connected, but the birdie wobbled

out of bounds. 3-16.

“Crap!”

The yard was now completely in shadow, and the air had turned chilly. The light in the kitchen window

shone yellow and warm, and I wished I was in there with my parents, or better still, at the library.

“Hurry up, nitwit,” Richie said.

I served to the exact same spot, which he wasn’t expecting. He got there and eked the birdie over the net,

but I was ready and slammed it at his feet before he could react. 4-16.

“Piss!”

I won three more points before Richie scored with a line drive aimed at my crotch. He laughed when I

flailed and knocked the birdie out of bounds. 17-7.

“That’s why it’s called a shuttlecock,” he said, pleased with himself, before winding up and serving directly

into the net. 8-17.

I won the next four in a row. The curses flowed. Richie finally scored when I slipped and whiffed at another

line drive. 18-12.

I could sense him growing more and more frustrated, which was my brother’s main weakness. I could only

beat him at something—poker, ping pong, HORSE—if he got angry at himself. It was as if the anger made

him less coordinated, both physically and mentally. And lately, he’d been pissed off about a lot of things.

School made him mad, our parents made him mad, his friends made him mad—and I certainly made him

mad.

THE UNDER REVIEW

BELDEN 39

“You’re going down, boy,” he said, preparing to serve. He hit a high floater, and I set up to return it. The

birdie seemed to take a full minute to come down, and as it fell, Richie screeched like a pterodactyl, trying

to distract me. But I managed a clean rope of a shot to the far edge of the court, and he couldn’t get there

in time. 13-18.

He scooped up the shuttlecock and shot it at me like a bullet. When I walked back to serve, I smiled,

knowing I now had a chance.

The day before, while horsing around in the yard, Richie had asked me to catch him in a trust fall, like we

used to do when we were younger. One of us would stand in front of the other, facing away, and fall

backward, trusting the other to catch him.

“Me first,” he said.

We hadn’t done trust falls in ages, and I wasn’t sure how this would go—Richie now stood about six inches

taller than me and twenty pounds heavier. He waited longer than I expected, trying to throw me off, which

was what he used to do when we first played this game. “Come on,” I said, and he finally fell back. Somehow

I managed to grab hold under his arms before he could land on the ground, and with a grunt I pushed him

back up to standing.

“Your turn,” he said.

I stood in front of him and felt his presence right behind me. When we were younger, I would dread the

backward fall—I was never sure if I could trust him to catch me—but Richie had always been there.

“Ready?” I said.

“Absolutely.”

I shut my eyes and fell. I immediately knew he’d stepped away—I could sense him disappearing. My butt hit

the ground first, then my elbows, and, finally, my head. It didn’t hurt that much on the grass, though I

scraped my elbow enough to draw a little blood. But I did experience a momentary sense of shock, the way

I felt once when, in the dark, I’d misjudged a step and went sprawling. Richie laughed and laughed, and I

ran inside so as to not cry in front of him.


40

I remembered this incident just before serving, and my anger seemed to have the opposite effect on me

than it did on my brother. It traveled from my heart into my arm, giving me the strength to pound the

shuttlecock far over Richie’s head, but not too far as to be out of bounds. He didn’t stand a chance. 14-18.

“You dick!”

I scored three more points: Richie returned one into the net, hit one out of bounds, and whiffed one. On

my next serve, he barely returned it, but the birdie hit the top of the net and tumbled over. 19-18, Richie.

He was just two points away from winning.

“Now,” he said, grabbing the birdie off the ground and fixing me with a mad stare, “you die.”

I couldn’t believe I’d almost caught up. But if I lost the next point, I’d have to win the following two just to

stay alive. (You must win by two points in badminton, a stupid rule.)

Richie backed up to the edge of the brick patio and stared at me for a moment. I had come to know that

stare lately. It said, Do not cross me.

He held out the shuttlecock, dropped it, and swung. Thunk. He caught it at the edge of the racquet and the

birdie wobbled out of bounds. 19-19, my serve.

Richie went to pound his racquet on the ground but thought better of it. Without saying a word, he picked

up the birdie and whacked it toward me. He then positioned himself and waited for my serve.

“Come on, ya little turd,” he said.

My heart felt too large as it pushed up against my ribs. I wished my parents would come out to the back

porch—not so they could witness my potential victory, but so they could protect me if I managed to win.

My serve sailed over the net, Richie returned it easily, and we volleyed for what felt like an hour, back and

forth, almost lazily at first, with no attempt to make each other run too far, and then Richie slapped one

deep to my left. Somehow I reached it and popped it just over the net, and he barely managed to get under

it and launch it high into the air before scrambling back to better handle my inevitable slam. I raised my

racquet for the power shot, but when the birdie finally dropped, I barely tapped the thing so that it inched

over the net and fell like a dead sparrow. 20-19.

THE UNDER REVIEW

BELDEN 41

“Fuck!” Richie cried. I waited for my father to show his face in the window, but he and my mother must

have retired to the den to watch TV.

“You suck!” Richie added.

I didn’t respond, didn’t even grin, though I felt jubilant inside. And terrified. Should I lose the next three

volleys on purpose? I was quite capable of doing so, and of making it look natural. But I wouldn’t lose on

purpose. I wanted to win.

Richie, jittery and jangly, waited for my serve.

I bulleted the birdie over the net, and Richie shot it straight back at me. He’d hit it so hard, all I had to do

was hold out my racquet and the shuttlecock pinged back over. He returned it off to my left, and I

backhanded it toward the opposite corner. Richie barely arrived in time to send the birdie down the line.

For a second I thought I’d lost this point, but I stretched and managed to pop it over. Surprised, Richie was

slow to move. He charged forward and dove, his racquet just able to scoop the birdie up and across. But

now he lay flat on his belly. I knew I had him. I reached the shuttlecock easily and swatted it over him. We

both watched it land a good two feet in-bounds.

21-19!

I looked down at Richie. He looked up at me. I glanced toward the house behind him. I’d never make it past

him to the door. I had only seconds.

I ran.

Behind our house lived the Caserta family. I tore through the narrow opening that had been worn down by

foot traffic between the hedges that separated our backyards. The Casertas’ terrifying German Shepherd,

Otto, barked from a window as I zipped down a hill into the Conleys’ yard next door. I followed a path

alongside their house to their front yard and 22 nd Street. Not sure which way to go, I hesitated before

turning right, toward Logan Avenue. I didn’t once look behind me, but I could hear my brother huffing back

there and the slap of his Converse sneakers on the sidewalk. From the sound of it, he was about twenty

yards behind.


42

At Logan Avenue, I turned left, heading toward the 25 th Street branch of the public library. They were

open until eight, but I didn’t know what time it was now. I prayed the doors were not locked.

My brother was athletic, but I managed to stay ahead of him past 23 rd and 24 th Streets. Twenty-fifth was a

busy thoroughfare, and I knew I might need to pause to let cars pass before crossing. If that happened,

Richie would catch me for sure, so I resolved to turn right if necessary and head down to Market Avenue, a

major road where there would be plenty of witnesses in case Richie caught up and started whaling on me.

Luckily, traffic was light, and I shot across 25 th toward the library. I saw several cars in the parking lot and a

couple of bikes where I would park my own when I visited. I yanked open the front door leading into the

vestibule with its flyer-clotted bulletin boards and then entered the second door into the library proper.

Not once had I looked back.

The library was one large room with the main desk in the middle. On three sides stood orderly rows of

bookshelves where I’d lose myself and all track of time whenever I could. The place was blessedly quiet. All

I could hear as I staggered toward the periodicals section near the front door was the frantic pounding of

my heart. Miss Laura, the librarian, watched curiously as I sat and tried to catch my breath. She was a

skinny older lady who always wore her hair in a bun and a cardigan sweater over her dress. I waved to her,

attempting to be nonchalant despite my wheezing, then turned my attention to the door. I waited, one

minute, then two, but Richie did not enter. I thought of vampires unable to pass the threshold of a church.

The clock read 7:47—thirteen minutes to closing. Would Richie wait outside for me, like a patient lion

watching for an injured antelope to wander off from its herd? Able to breathe now, I walked over toward a

window. There, by the bike rack, paced my brother, arms across his chest, gazing up at the sky. He looked

mad—not in an angry way, but a crazy way, as if I’d stolen his wallet or his Who albums rather than beat

him in a game of badminton. The sky was turning dark, and I wondered if our parents had noticed our

absence. Probably not. They were likely waiting for The Flip Wilson Show to start.

“Attention, attention,” Miss Laura announced over the PA system. “The library will be closing in ten

minutes. If you need to check out books, please come to the front desk now. Thank you.”

As several people lined up to check out their books, I wandered over to the cinema section and read about

Stanley Kubrick for ten minutes. I’d recently watched Paths of Glory on TV. Apparently, while directing

2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick wore the same style of clothes every day so as not to bother with yet

another decision.

THE UNDER REVIEW

BELDEN 43

When the fluorescent lights flickered, I joined Miss Laura at the door. She shut out the lights and removed

the keys from her purse.

“Did you ride your bike, Carl?” she asked.

“No, I walked.”

In the vestibule, she locked the inner door. I hoped that, at least for a moment, her presence would stop

Richie from pouncing on me when we left the building. But when we pushed through the outer door, my

brother was nowhere to be seen.

“It’s getting dark,” Miss Laura said.

The sky had turned a dark blue, and the clouds glowed pink with the light of the set sun. I hoped my

parents were too engrossed in the TV to notice that the streetlights had turned on.

“Will you get home okay?” Miss Laura asked.

I wanted her to offer me a ride, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. “Oh, sure,” I said. “It’s only a few blocks.”

“Well, all right then,” she said, smiling. “G’night, Carl.”

I watched her walk to her car at the far end of the otherwise empty parking lot. As she pulled away, I

expected Richie to leap out from around the corner of the building, but nothing happened. I crossed 25 th

Street and headed up Logan Avenue, shivering from both the chilly night air and the dread of the

inevitable attack. TV light flickered in living rooms, bats darted overhead. Every time I passed a tree I

clenched myself in anticipation. I turned up 21 st Street and, at our house, walked cautiously up the

driveway to the side door. I saw no one.

Inside, I heard the TV from the far end of the house. I walked slowly through the dining room, the front

entryway, the living room, still waiting to be pounced upon. In the den I found my parents and brother

watching Flip Wilson dressed as Geraldine. My father laughed loudly, an infectious laugh that almost

made me smile.


44 BELDEN

My mother glanced over and said, “Where’ve you been, sweetie?”

“The library,” I told her, knowing she’d approve. She nodded and turned back to the TV.

Richie lay on the sofa. He laughed along with our dad and—very purposely, I felt—avoided looking at me. I

considered joining them, but then I’d have to ask Richie to make room for me. He knew that it would be

hard for me to ask, which was why he lay across the entire sofa.

I went upstairs and read The Hobbit, brushed my teeth, got into my pajamas, and climbed into bed. At nine

o’clock, my mother tucked me in and switched off the light. I lay wide awake listening to her and my father

turning the pages of their books. From next door I could hear the tinny thump of drums and bass from

Richie’s headphones. It seemed like I was now finally safe from my brother. Still, I couldn’t sleep. Not

because I felt afraid, but because I felt jazzed from the amazing sense of accomplishment: I had beaten

Richie at badminton! It was like a movie in which the underdog claws his way from certain defeat to

victory with a combination of athletic prowess and psychological strategy. That final, game-winning volley

over Richie’s prone body—I relived it over and over.

Then, just as I started to drift off, I felt a cold hand clutch my ankle. I shrieked, my heart almost stopping

cold. Richie had slowly, stealthily crept along the floor into my room, leaving the music playing in his room

as a decoy, and reached under the blankets to grab me. I sat up, and in the deep, black quiet that followed,

heard a cruel giggle recede in the darkness toward the open door.

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45

Family Reunion

OWEN ELPHICK

The afternoon sun falls across the whole family,

crowded along the deck like crows, peering down,

and lining the driveway as I prepare to fight

my uncle. He pulls a pair of rust-licked foils

he found at some junk store from his truck,

excited as I’ve ever seen him. This bout

was his idea. He is going to lose, but

he doesn’t know that yet. I strap on

my pale plastron, slide into a white jacket,

and, as always at these functions, I wear

a mask, blinking behind the black film of mesh,

watching him bounce about, boyish but twice

my size, unprotected but for his own dented helmet,

his arms bare and exposed. My uncle, Patriots

disciple and patriot, lover of God

and this violent country. We may never

truly know each other. I have never been brave enough

to stand up to him, do not want to hurt him today

—just beat him, make him see me

for who I am. I face him and salute, lower

into en garde, feel every eye on me. I breathe, wait

for his attack, which comes almost immediately,

unwieldy and predictable. I parry, metal clattering

like my anger. He slashes when he should thrust,

and I realize he does not really know how to fence

—just how to swing a sword. He hoards weapons,

loves the possibility of their power, but he has not


46 ELPHICK

been in a real fight in a long time. In his mind,

this is just a game, a movie: he is Errol Flynn,

and I am whatever unnamed guard he has to slice

off the screen. On the sidelines, the spectators cheer

and caw, place bets, urge us on. There is a kind of violence

beneath every sport, and my relatives love each other

violently, would kill for one another, if they had to.

Every Christmas, all the cousins play Spoons,

wrestle on the rug over bits of metal. They shoot

hoops in the driveway, goals on the lawn, they fire

air rifles off the back porch. They join the team,

become athletes. They join the military, take aim

at the enemy. My family does not see me as

their enemy, but still, I have never quite been

on their team. Every conversation is a competition,

and finally, after years of keeping out of their contests,

I am speaking a language they understand. Finally,

a game to gather around, a way to connect with me.

Now, in this adrenaline-soaked passing

of the seconds, I am alive to every bodily tremor,

every opening in my uncle’s guard. I become

a scientist. I finger my instrument with care,

know each corner of its physics, how to sink

into gravity’s embrace, let momentum guide me.

Every fight is an experiment, but my body

has been beaten into knowing the principles.

I know what wood brought down on thumb does.

I’ve seen blades snap and skin bruise and

I am tired of being seen by my family in one way,

of owing them anything, even this pitiful duel.

Go on, Owen, get him! I hear someone yell,

and I lunge. And even when my tip sinks

into my uncle’s side, I am not sure who has won.

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47

Russell

BARRY PETERS

Watch a pine sway in gusts for an hour,

or even minutes: the subtle design,

nonchalant stretch and yawn,

belie its desire, a burst of shamrock

high in azure sky: sublime theater

reminiscent of NBA legend Bill Russell

defending a baseline, or his principles:

strong; obstinate; dignified; single-minded:

drawing a line that he dared anyone to cross:

and if the FBI still opens files on such lives

as matters of national security, may this leaf

be slid inside and the others excised, paper

crimes to be crumpled and swatted away,

airballs adrift in the spineless breeze.


48

Interview with Maya Washington

TERRY HORSTMAN

Maya Washington is a filmmaker (writer/director/producer),

actress, writer, poet, Creative Director, and arts educator. She

received a BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Southern

California and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline

University. Her work has garnered awards from Jerome

Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Minnesota Film and

Television, and others. Maya is dedicated to projects that have a

sense of “purpose” in the world, selecting stories that illuminate

some aspect of the human experience that is untold, rarely seen,

or might benefit from new approaches to issues of diversity and

inclusion, primarily in America.

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.

THE UNDER REVIEW

49

This interview was conducted virtually and originally published as a podcast episode of ‘The Under

Review Presents With the Call: a podcast on sports & writing’ on February 11, 2021. It has been edited for

clarity and length.

Terry Horstman: My guest today is Maya Washington. Maya is a Under Review All-Star, author of the

poem Get Your Racket Back, Keep Your Eyes On It, about the Saint Paul MLK Tennis Buff, which we had the

privilege of publishing in our second issue and was one of our six Pushcart nominees from 2020. Maya is

also the host of the podcast Light and Shadow, and the director of several films including the documentary

Through the Banks of the Red Cedar, which will be published as a memoir this fall from Little A Books. Maya,

thanks for joining me today.

Maya Washington: Thanks for having me.

TH: I want to talk about your film first and I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to give a little pitch on

what Through the Banks of the Red Cedar is for any of our listeners who may not have seen it yet.

MW: Through the Banks of the Red Cedar follows my father Gene

Washington, who played for the Minnesota Vikings in the late 60s

and early 70s, and his experiences growing up in the segregated

south before being recruited to run track and play football at

Michigan State University at the peak of the Civil Rights

Movement in America. What was unique about his team at

Michigan State, is they were the first fully integrated college

football team in America. So he and his teammates were from

throughout the United States, but a number of them were

African-American and recruited from the south. They went on to

win back-to-back national championship titles, and my dad and

three (of his Spartans teammates) were drafted in the first round

of the NFL Draft in 1967.

It’s a story about family. It’s a father/daughter story. It’s a story

about race and the ways that sports play an important role in

changing and shaping culture. It’s about how my dad’s generation,

and of course those who came long before them, really paved the

way for the opportunities we see in sports today for people of all ethnic backgrounds, as well as women.

There’s just a lot of important history there and that’s sort of what Through the Banks of the Red Cedar

encapsulates.


50

TH: You mention in the beginning of the documentary that by the time you were born your dad’s football

career was already completely over and that football wasn’t really part of your childhood. My first

question is when did that change and when did the story of your dad’s historic football career get on your

radar as a story you knew you wanted to tell?

MW: I’d say things really shifted for me in 2011. At the end of

2010, my dad retired from the business sector. My dad worked at

3M for most of my life. He was a guy who put on a suit and went

to work everyday. He had this really great retirement party. Some

of his former teammates from the Vikings showed up, like Joe

Kapp, former Justice Alan Page, and I really got to hear a lot of

great stories. Around that time he was also voted one of the 50

Greatest Vikings of All Time. So, this sort of shift in my dad’s life

occurred when I was being introduced to some of his friends and

teammates I never met because their chapter in history occurred

before I was born.

Of course I knew Justice Page from growing up here in

Minnesota, but Joe Kapp was not someone in my memory I had

the opportunity to meet. Things really ramped up in August of

2011 when I had the great fortune to attend Bubba Smith’s

memorial service alongside my dad and many of his (college)

teammates. At that moment, it was the first time I was able to

really hear that it was Bubba Smith who recommended my dad for his opportunity at Michigan State. I’ve

sort of had this fantasy that these magical white men randomly found my dad in Texas, and as someone

who loves history, it never occurred to me to try and piece together how that really happened, why that

happened, knowing that everything was completely segregated in Texas, that a university would find him

and bring him to Michigan State and give him this great opportunity.

So learning about that at a time it was unfortunately too late to thank Bubba Smith really sort of stung in a

very personal way and a realization that every door that opened for my dad could be tied back to the

Smith family. And of course every door that opened for me, tied back to them too. That really put me on

this passionate dive into history.

My dad was voted into the College Football Hall of Fame also in 2011. Bubba Smith, and George Webster

at the time, were two of the total four from that 1967 Draft Class, were already members of the National

College Football Hall of Fame, and later (the fourth member of that draft class) Clinton Jones joined them.

I just thought this was amazing and this important history with Duffy Daugherty, their coach, what sports

historians and journalists called ‘The Underground Railroad of College Football,’ there was so much to

uncover that I felt that film was the right avenue to dive into this history as a documentary from the

perspective of me as my dad’s daughter.

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HORSTMAN 51

It truly is, more than anything, a love letter

to Bubba Smith and to his father Willie

Ray Smith, who were really instrumental in

my dad getting to Michigan State. And of

course to all the pioneers whose stories

people in your and my generation really

don’t know because it happened before we

were born. I’m just really passionate about

documenting that history and offering a

space for these very incredible men to tell

their stories.

TH: I have friends’ dads’, whose favorite player was your dad. I’m just wondering without having the

knowledge that he was this football star as a kid, were there ever interruptions when you were out in

public of strangers coming up to your dad to talk to him, or get pictures, or autographs, or interact with

him when you were just trying to have family time.

MW: Yeah I think my earliest memory of that happening, we were all out for a family dinner. I was really

young so I don’t really remember the context, but I remember someone coming up to the table and asking

my dad for an autograph. Really having no context for that, I think I was more excited about whatever

restaurant we were at having frog legs. Someone ordered them and let me taste them and I just thought

that was the wildest ever. To this day I don’t think I’ve had frog legs ever again. I think it’s funny that that

memory coincides with that experience with my dad.

It was kind of weird because at the time I was coming up, it was more like people’s parents. My siblings

were around (for his playing days), so their Gen X friends have those memories. There were a lot of

situations where people were very nice to us. People were always saying hello and I just thought it was

that my dad was a really friendly person and not because they

recognized him, or thought it was pretty cool to meet him. It is

really interesting I guess. It’s an interesting and weird experience.

TH: This documentary is also going to be released as your memoir

later this year from Little A Books. I think what’s cool about this is

you do often see books come out, getting optioned for film, and

then being adapted into film. Maybe it’s more common than I’m

thinking it is, but I feel like I don’t often see a film go the other

route from a film to a book. Did you always know you also wanted

to write the book version of this film? And what has that process

of bringing it to the world in an alternate form been like?

MW: When I started my filmmaking career, I started as an actress

and a dancer and started making films in 2011. My first film is a

narrative short film called White Space. It’s about a deaf


52

performance poet, who is performing for a hearing audience for the first time. Of course my first film

being about poetry, it made sense for there to be storytelling across different platforms. That was always

conceived of ‘okay, there’s this short film, I can see the benefit, especially in the literary community, of

making sure that hearing poets and writers are partnering with deaf poets and writers and introducing

the idea of having ASL interpreters at readings and performances so we can be more inclusive in that way.’

Also, it had a third component, well it kind of turned into four components. You have the short film. You

have ASL interpreters at readings and not how we’re accustomed to seeing it in the American theater

where the sign language interpreter is down stage right and off the stage and away from the action that’s

happening. Just trying to re-invent what that might be if we had more inclusive live experiences. It was

also visiting schools, sharing the film, doing residencies and educational workshops with young students

and not-so-young students, college students as well. And the final component was a poetry anthology that

had the work of deaf and hearing poets that I edited, as well as fine art.

Over the years it’s just sort of my M.O. as someone who dabbles in so many different art forms. It’s very

surreal in 2020 seeing what’s happened with Covid and the extent to which everything has had to move to

virtual spaces or the idea that we’re telling stories in hybrid ways now. This is something I was dabbling in

like ten years ago. So it’s kind of cool to have a project of this scale be able to rise to this moment. With

Through the Banks of the Red Cedar, even before the film finally came out, I had been doing artist’s

residencies, educational touring, talking about these issues, talking about the desegregation of college

football at colleges and high schools, a group of elementary school students were able to come out and see

the film. I worked in collaboration with a

couple of photographers here in the Twin

Cities, Tom Baker and Hannah Foslin on a

huge project with Hennepin Theater Trust

when the Super Bowl was here. On Mayo

Clinic Square, we had huge portraits, like

huge 40-foot portraits of my dad, Carl

Eller, Justice Page, along with quotes from

the film. That was a big opportunity to

have this storytelling in a public arts

format, or in an urban art gallery so to

speak, to just cover the side of a giant

building in downtown Minneapolis with

these ideas and these topics.

By the time an opportunity came to develop a literary component (to this story), maybe it was something

that was in the back of my mind, but at the time I was just trying to continue to get the feature film out.

Interestingly enough, the acquiring editor at Little A is a colleague and friend of mine, a poet named

Hafizah Geter. In 2011, when my family attended my dad’s induction to the College Football Hall of Fame

at the Waldorf Astoria, Hafizah kindly babysat my nieces in the hotel room above the ballroom where we

were all attending the banquet. She had sort of been following me, following this story, at a time when I

was not even aware that 10 years later I’d still be trying to tell this story. She approached me, maybe in the

spring of 2018, and had been looking for manuscripts and reaching out to her network.

THE UNDER REVIEW

HORSTMAN 53

So I was like, ‘Hey, remember this movie I’ve been making forever? Don’t you think it would make a good

book?’ And she was like, ‘Actually, I think it would.’

We continued that conversation and the rest is sort of history. It led to a proposal that was accepted. It’s

been in the works for a couple years now and we’re racing down the tracks, which has been very fun and

exciting to see the film have its first broadcast run and do that in the world as I’m making choices about

what images to use for the book and moving into what will hopefully be publication in the fall of 2021.

TH: With the approach to the book then, something I’m thinking about in comparing books to movies, and

what makes me excited that this is going to be a book is that there’s a lot of room to elaborate on things.

You have more space for content in a book than in a 80/90-minute documentary. I am definitely someone

who is more scared of editing than generating. Writing 2,000 words is a lot easier than writing 200 words

for me. So I love the idea of getting to elaborate on every piece of story that’s here and pull out a bunch of

threads, but I know not every writer is that way. Is that an element of the book that you were excited for,

or was it a little terrifying?

MW: I think before I dove in it was so exciting because there’s just so much history. John Hannah for

example, was the president of Michigan State throughout the time my dad was there, and for most of his

tenure at Michigan State University as the president, he was the chairperson of the Civil Rights

Commission of the United States of America. He was instrumental in a number of major legislations. Like

Brown vs. the Board of Education, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964-65, and really had a very interesting role

in how Duffy Daugherty was able to create a pipeline to the South and recruit black players. He had that

support all the way up to the top of the university from President Hannah. To know that that was

happening, while my dad was playing football and maybe occasionally the president of the university

would make an appearance, you know how they do. To know they were in proximity to such major shifts

and change and lasting impact is pretty remarkable.

Going down that wormhole, I was like, ‘Yes, this is so great! I can talk about John Hannah! I can delve into

who the pioneers were before my dad.’ In 1913, Gideon Smith was the first black player at Michigan State.

There were other black players throughout the Big Ten Conference. The history kind of quickly got

overwhelming and became the hardest part. When you’re writing a historical narrative there’s things that

I’m super excited about that visually you can, I don’t want to say cheat your way through, but you can kind

of cut to the chase your way through in film, that in prose, wasn’t necessarily the case. If you’re going to go

there (in prose), you’re really going to have to fully flesh out that storyline or that thread that you’re going

down.

It’s far more interesting to not just think about that fact that exists, but the context around that fact and

who John Hannah was as a human being and what the Big Ten Conference was. Even here in Minnesota,

the University of Minnesota has kind of a challenging history and relationship to race. They’re sort of

credited as pioneers, certainly (Coach Murray) Warmath and the number of black players throughout time

before my dad, but they’re also responsible for the death of Jack Trice, who was a black player at Iowa

State and was effectively trampled by the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team. There’s that kind of

stuff that’s in the book that I’m really honored and grateful to shed light on because these aren’t well


54

known stories in college football. I think telling them from the perspective of a non-footballer, hopefully

gives an interesting perspective because of course I’m definitely more interested in the people. These are

players, they’re figures, they’re stats, but they’re human beings who were going through different things in

their lives and were very brave and noble. It has been incredibly daunting.

I would definitely say the amount of history and the amount of connecting threads has definitely been the

hardest part. And as a poet, truly, writing this much prose is intense. I’m not going to lie. Luckily I’m

passionate about the subject matter and I wrote the script for the film, but it’s definitely a new experience.

TH: Well, as a prose writer, [the idea of] writing poetry definitely terrifies me so I can understand the

heebie-jeebies that come with writing in a secondary form. On a similar note, you work in pretty much

every kind of artistic form that exists. It sounds like it was kind of a natural reaction for you to have at your

dad’s retirement party hearing all these great stories, to think, ‘this would make a great film,’ then as the

film got closer to think, ‘well, this would also make a great book.’ Do you usually have an ‘Aha!’ moment, or

do you have a process for determining whether an idea would be a great poem, or film, or theater, or

dance, or one of the many other things you do? I’m curious to hear the process for the appropriate form

for each idea.

MW: There’s sort of an initial, ‘Aha!’ Whitespace was literally a dream. In that moment as you’re awakening

in the morning and you hit the snooze button, but I saw it very clearly visually and it was literally a poet on

their way somewhere and it culminates in a poetry performance. That was it.

That sort of told me this is a short film. I can’t explain it. I don’t know why, but it was a short film. I think, as

an indie filmmaker, what seems to happen

is the other components seem to reveal

themselves as I move towards the target

of the initial project or container. I have

another narrative short film called Clear,

and that is about a woman reconnecting

with her family after a wrongful

conviction. So that idea came to be

because my friend and colleague, Tina

Ngata Barr, was in her PhD dissertation

process at the University of Minnesota.

When she showed me what she wanted to

do her dissertation on, which was re-entry

benefits and resources for exonerated people, she educated me on how challenging that is. I assume when

we see those news reports that someone’s been released from prison after 30 years for a crime they didn’t

commit, and you see their family crying, you imagine they go have this steak dinner and get a big bag of

money from the government, but unfortunately that is not the case. Many people fare worse than their

counterparts who may have been guilty of the crime they were convicted of, or who may have served a full

sentence and are eligible for certain re-entry resources. That was really fascinating to me.

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HORSTMAN 55

As her friend and someone who lives in Minnesota, thank goodness we are blessed to have great public

funding for the arts. I said to her, ‘I think this would really be a great film. I would love to see if I could write

something and work with you to see if we could further educate people about this issue.’ I was able to get a

grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board for that project and it came out the same year that Through the

Banks of the Red Cedar came out.

For me there’s the initial idea that comes in its own container. I knew Through the Banks of the Red Cedar

was going to be a feature. I can’t tell you how I knew that, but I knew it was going to be a documentary and

a feature documentary. Whitespace, I knew it was a short film and a narrative, and I knew Clear was a short

film and a narrative. Oftentimes your road to getting that work funded, if you’re going the indie route, the

path to building community, building an audience, for me everything I do has some kind of social impact or

education component. As much as I enjoy making art and being around artists, I don’t just make art for

myself. It’s just happened very organically that there’s always some kind of educational component and

some opportunity for the community to engage in conversation about the issues that a film represents. It’s

true storytelling with a purpose that the work is hopefully inherently entertaining, and interesting, and

compelling, and has high artistic merit, but it’s really meant to exist in any place or space that people are

where it can inspire conversation and dialogue or even action.

I love art and I love the ways you can tell a story through photography, film, literature, dance, theater, live

performance, and public conversation and discussion. I think the arts are just a really great way for people

who otherwise wouldn’t maybe be in an artistic setting, or artists who maybe aren’t exposed to a social

issue, are able to have that experience through the work I try to create. I try to create an experiential

witness to story.

Thank you so much again to Maya Washington for being part of Issue 04 of the Under Review. Pre-order

Maya’s book, Through the Banks of the Red Cedar, today from Little A Books.


56

Racing Dad

KIMBERLY J. BROWN

I tell Dad, “I bet I can beat you.” He looks older, bigger, slower.

How old am I? Around a time when I am too short to reach the mailbox. A time I play 52-card pickup (childme

eagerly agrees to his question: yes I want to play)! A time when I am his Kimmy Jo from Kokomo. A

time when, riding in a car, watching the road pass beneath the window, I believe I can jump out and run. A

conceivable feat. Easy. Just like this race.

Dad agrees to my challenge. We line up on an imaginary line at the edge of our property and our

neighbor’s backyard. Marshy-damp fresh-cut blades of grass squish between my toes. He gives me half a

field advantage, which I don’t think I’ll need. I imagine myself an Olympic runner. Definitely fast. And my

poor Dad: I’m going to beat him. Left foot forward, arms at my sides, poised to explode across this flat

earth.

“On your mark. Get set. Go!”

I run at breakneck speed. Wind tousles my hair.

This race will freeze in time—like other times—before I know of Dad as a famous, record-setting, Ring-of-

Honor-inducted Minnesota Viking. Times when I’ll fly my open palm over the flat terrain of Dad’s crew cut

like a glider on a breeze and I’ll delightedly say, It’s so soft, and his gruff reply, You’re a turkey!, his nickname

to tease everyone. Times he’ll brush my hand away, acting brashly annoyed but his big grin gives him away,

his cheeks rosy compared with the fairer skin of his head and neck. Times when he’ll say, “You’re such a

bully” and I’ll giggle, since, from a distance, his crew cut looks sharp—tough like him. But to touch is a

different experience… fine like a baby’s. Times when I rub and he lets me.

I am winning the race when I feel a presence. Dad gains on me. I don’t have to look. He wins easily. Aw, jeez.

Chuckling and grinning, he pretend-socks me in the arm. He says, “Thought you could beat the old man,

huh?” Dad scoops me up and I ride his arm toward the house. Did I wrap my arms around his neck? Surely

his scratchy chin mussed my cheek. Surely something holier than simple memory conjures such

sweetness.

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57

A Baseball Story

CLAIRE TAYLOR

My father remembers feeling like the ball was traveling in slow motion and he was frozen in place. My

mother remembers it was Father’s Day; every dad through the gate was gifted a pair of boxer shorts. My

brother remembers watching old episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the waiting room while eating a

Whatchamacallit candy bar. My sister was too young to remember anything at all. And I remember

thinking, in the split second after the ball smashed into my cheek, “Wow, that hurt. I should probably cry

now,” and then I burst into tears.

The June 21, 1992 meeting between the San Antonio Missions and the Wichita Wranglers was halted

somewhere around the third or fourth inning when a foul ball rocketed into the stands behind home plate

and collided with my seven-year-old face. I had bent down to take a sip from my oversized soda and when I

lifted my head back up, a ball was flying toward me with such alarming speed that neither my father on

one side of me nor my brother on the other, baseball glove already on his hand, had a chance to reach out

and prevent the impact. For a moment, the entire stadium was stunned into silence, and then just as

suddenly, the air was pierced with the sound of my scream. There was blood. Confusion. The stitches of

the ball formed a bruised imprint on my cheek. Later, a doctor would tell us that another inch higher and

the ball could have blinded my left eye permanently.

My dad scooped me up and carried me down through the stands, past the hushed crowd with their palms

covering their shocked mouths. Out through the silent stadium to the parking lot where we piled into our

car and drove straight to the hospital. I recall sitting in a hospital room with ice on my face. I recall taking

X-rays, the weight of the lead apron. I recall feeling outraged that my brother and sister got to eat candy

bars and watch TV while all of this was happening. After the hospital, we went to a burger joint whose

name I can’t remember but whose booths I can still picture in my mind as if I were sitting in one right now. I

ate french fries that I squished flat between my thumb and forefinger to make them thin enough to push

through the thin opening of my sore, swollen jaw. At some point that summer, a baseball arrived in the

mail for me, signed in blue marker by all of the players on the San Antonio Missions. Every inch of the ball

is covered in illegible signatures. It is an unsightly, worthless token that I have nevertheless continued to

carry with me from place to place throughout my life.

Sixteen years after this incident, I married a man who collects autographed baseballs. For a while he

attempted to collect the signatures of every living Hall of Famer, which is how we came to have signed

balls from Monte Irvin, Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, Al Kaline. We have balls signed by members of the 2006


58 TAYLOR

Detroit Tigers World Series team. We have a ball signed by four of the most famous Baltimore Orioles

that is worth nothing because Frank Robinson botched his signature and turned the whole thing into

garbage. My husband calls it The Frank Ball. We have a Home Run Derby ball signed by Mark Teixeira. It is

not one of the only two home run balls he hit during the 2005 Home Run Derby, though my husband did

catch one of those home runs. He then pestered Teixeira into signing the ball when the Rangers returned

to Detroit the following year.

That ball was stolen from our bedroom during a house party in college. It was replaced years later after we

moved to Baltimore. Teixeira was a guest of honor at a charity function connected to my husband’s work.

My husband purchased a 2005 Home Run Derby stamped ball through eBay and asked Teixeira to sign it.

It’s an adequate replacement, but it isn’t the same. The value of the original Teixeira ball was the story it

carried. My husband’s tale of how the Comerica Park ushers shooed people out out the section of the

stands where he had been watching batting practice before the Derby started. They sent everyone back

to their ticketed seats, but somehow my husband managed to go unnoticed and maintained his spot

against the upper deck wall. In the footage from the Home Run Derby, you can see a glove reach out

across the tunnel at the back of right field, snag the ball out of the air, and then lift triumphantly above my

husband’s head, a lifelong baseball fan with the ultimate reward for his efforts.

I prefer the story of the second Teixeira ball. After the theft, my husband went searching for information

about Teixeira’s autograph-signing events. That search led him to a job posting that became his first career

out of college. A job that eventually brought him into contact with Mark Teixeira. A job that brought us to

Baltimore where we have built a life, set down roots, welcomed a child. A child who sometimes likes to

point to all the signed baseballs lining our bookcase and ask where they came from. These are the ones

from various Hall of Famers, I tell him. These ones are Tigers players. Here is The Frank Ball. Here is the

one signed by Mark Teixeira, I say and I tell him the whole story.

My son’s favorite ball is the one covered in blue writing. The only somewhat notable signature on there is

Raúl Mondesí. I had my husband look it over to be sure. I had him research the game and take a look at the

team roster. What he found was not the presence of something significant, but its absence. About a month

before the foul ball nearly fractured my cheekbone, Mike Piazza had been crouching behind home plate in

San Antonio. He was promoted to the Albuquerque Dukes (now the Isotopes) before moving up to play for

the Dodgers and going on to have a Hall of Fame career. One month.

What a bummer, my husband said when he discovered this news. So close. But actually, I prefer it this way.

It makes for a better story.

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59

Stepping Aside

PATRICK McGRAW

I lurched along the rim of the Grand Canyon. With each gust of wind, I planted a foot, steadying myself

against certain death. I had come to the canyon with its thousand-foot drops to conquer my adult onset

fear of heights.

For the sake of disclosure, you should probably know that as I lurched, I was walking the Rim Trail near

Mather Point. The trail at this point is flat, paved and, I believe, wheelchair accessible with s-p-a-c-e

between the trail and the rim of the canyon. Yet I lurched, certain I would be blown into the canyon. I have

never heard of a full-grown man being blown into the canyon, but I am also certain my life is destined to be

marked with such ignominy.

My Grand Canyon trip actually began earlier in the day at the Cameron Trading Post where I had a lunch

of fry bread and waited for a storm to pass through. Although the rain had let up, when I arrived at the

park entrance, clouds and fog enveloped me, hiding the canyon. Yet, as I stepped out of the car, on cue the

fog lifted and the clouds parted, giving me my first ever view of the Grand Canyon. It was beautiful, the

late afternoon sun casting long shadows, deepening the reds and rusts of the canyon.

If only the beauty of the canyon could have been my first thought, a memory to cherish. Instead, seeing the

Grand Canyon, one of the world’s wonders, for the first time in my life, my first thought was a shrug of a

thought, “Oh. Doesn’t seem that big.”

That, of course, is the type of thinking that forces park rangers to conduct hundreds of rescue missions

each year as people start hiking down into the canyon without water or forgetting that little part about

hiking back up the trail. I’ve been on hikes of ten miles or more, but having a healthy respect for a flight of

stairs (meaning I get winded), I wasn’t planning to hike down to the river and back up in one day. If you take

the Bright Angel trail, that’s nearly 10 miles just to get down to the river, and then 4,000 feet back up,

which is way more than the four flights of stairs I avoid back home by taking the elevator to my apartment.


60

When I was planning my trip, I briefly toyed with riding a mule down to the river and back. In addition to a

fear of heights, I’m a bit of a nervous passenger. As a passenger in a car, I “steer” with my knees, twisting to

the right when the driver gets too close to the center line and to the left when too close to the shoulder. I

slam on the brakes constantly and then attempt to cover the action with a pretended stretch. Most drivers

eventually ask me to sit in the back, so they don’t have to witness my tortured movements.

I’m bad enough with friends, so the idea of handing control over to a mule didn’t sit well with me.

Everything I read, however, said they were safe. And I’m guessing they have more sense than most hikers.

So it wasn’t their abilities I doubted, as much as I feared getting the one suicidal mule in the bunch.

Down the trail, up the trail. Day after day after day. Carrying stupid tourists. Then standing before the

mule is me: his next tourist, a six-foot tall, 200-pound man (maybe just a tad more than 200 pounds).

Rather than just walk off the job, suppose my mule decides to take us both out in a blaze of glory. I don’t

know that I could blame him.

In the end I decided I was being foolish if for no other reason than the outfitter’s business model requires a

strong safety record. Siding with reason rather than my fears, I started to book a mule trip down the

canyon. Started. I didn’t finish the reservation because there was one little problem.

I was over the weight limit. Too fat to ride a mule.

At least my humiliation was conducted privately before a computer screen, rather than at the canyon atop

a knee buckling mule. It did make me wonder, though, how many people make reservations according to

the weight listed on their driver’s license. Or does the fear of being asked in front of everyone to get off a

mule override the instinct to lie about our weight?

Perhaps I should have mastered walking along the Rim Trail without fear before trying other trails, but

even for me that felt like too much of a baby step. For my second hike, I had settled on the Bright Angel

trail, a mere stone’s throw from my cabin on the south rim of the canyon. I had read up on the trail and

thought a three-mile hike down to the rest house would be a good first challenge with its well-maintained

trail, tunnels, and switchbacks. The first two tenths of a mile of the trail were described as “not too steep.”

Once on the Bright Angel trail, I quickly realized the brochure and I had vastly different definitions of

steep, not to mention what the brochure left out. Flattened against the wall of the canyon, pretending like

I was taking pictures, but in fact too petrified to move, it was not the pitch of the trail I cared about. It was

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McGRAW 61

vast nothingness on the side of the trail, which the brochure neglected to mention, that bothered me. Yet

hikers and families were oohing and aahing over the views as though death weren’t imminent. (You should

probably keep in mind that the trail is wide enough for a mule with room to spare for a hiker to stand off to

the side.) I continued to inch my way down the trail, but rather than conquering my fear of heights, it

argued back pointing out that every step would have to be repeated on the way up.

To my great relief, a ranger was warning hikers of a storm coming in. I took that as my cue to scramble back

up the trail. That imagery suggests an agility that was not present. My ascent was more of a slow crawl

with knees shaking, and lungs wheezing and huffing and puffing. Like everyone, I stopped to take pictures,

but that was mainly to catch my breath.

I was little more than a mile into the canyon, a thousand feet below the rim, still painfully afraid of heights,

when I changed my idea of big.


62

The Runner

MORROW DOWDLE

Sleep’s reject is running an hour or more

before it can properly be called morning.

At Gold Park, a young deer eats grass

near the edge of the playground.

It will be long gone by the time

of the regular joggers and dog walkers.

The runner knows how night’s calm

can engender turmoil, thoughts wild

and racing, a deer chased by a wolf.

The twisted sheets, the in-and-out of bed.

A literal journey towards lost sleep,

its milestones the magazine splayed,

the cup with milk residue, the open bottle of pills

by the bathroom sink. The watch that ticked

off the seconds that sleep did not show its face,

chronicling the passage of night

though she perceived no lightening

of the sky, no shift in the position of stars.

Pink tinges the horizon,

the runner now an arm’s length away,

yet the deer keeps eating, as if it’s forgotten

the rules. As if it’s realized how much fear

is irrational, like the fear of not sleeping,

which drives the not-sleeping, the dread

setting in at bedtime despite dreadful fatigue.

The deer watches the runner calmly,

wolf though she may be. Making her think

about peace somewhere in night’s far reach.

Making her think perhaps she, too,

could stop running.

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63

The Crash on Stadium Drive

RICHARD MORIARTY

What Rhea doesn’t remember: fighting against tears, biting her tongue, and bleeding from the mouth onto

her seersucker shorts after her Schwinn’s front wheel skidded over a softball, sending her nose to the

pavement. What she does remember: the sound of an aluminum bat crashing against a ball, the ensuing

shouts from the crowd at the ballfield beside the street, and the swirls of memory from her own softball

days, making her taste infield dirt instead of blood––in her own playing days, she practiced every day of

the year, lugging her bucket of balls and her bat to the high school field down the street from her

childhood home, taking hundreds of swings off the batting tee, even in flurries and temperatures in the

teens. Before anyone noticed her curled up next to the bike, she heard the ringing of a collar: a dog was

running toward her, barking for help.


64

Bonus Days

AMY ZARANEK

In basketball, a team goes into the bonus when their opponent reaches a foul limit. They are awarded a free throw

for each foul that follows: a reward for weathering physicality, a chance to improve their odds.

“These are bonus days,” my dad said on every nice day past November in our hometown in metro Detroit.

The sky clear and sunny, the temperature above fifty, the days were just that: bonuses. Sailboats dotted

the lake, dashing past fishermen on the piers who in any other weather would’ve been swamped by

crashing, freezing waves. Those days, we went outside like our lives depended on it. Like if we didn’t, the

sun might not come up again.

A former college basketball player, Dad drilled me on the half-court in our backyard. Our shoes crunched

on acorns that sent the ball bouncing erratically with each dribble. Dad never played easy against me, even

when I was a child. When I decided to focus on softball, he learned everything about the sport—the

nuance of pitching, the mechanics of power hitting, daily workout regimens. Bonus days on the court

changed to bonus days of Dad sitting on an overturned five-gallon bucket, glove outstretched. I pitched

until my chest burned with cold air and effort. He coached me to a college scholarship of my own.

But it was more than sports to us: during those days, we talked about my classmates, my goals, which

subjects I struggled with, which electives I loved. We made up goofy songs on the way to the field. Through

bonus days, my dad became my best friend.

The referee holds up an index finger on each hand: one-and-one. The crowd goes silent. The shooter tiptoes the

foul line for the first shot, reaching toward the rim as if clinging to possibility.

On a Friday night in January, after my athletic career was over, Dad kept score at the high school

basketball team’s rivalry game. With seconds left in halftime, he crossed the court with concessions and

collapsed. Cardiac arrest.

He had no symptoms; his heart simply stopped. After rounds of CPR, an athletic trainer, an AED, and an

ambulance saved his life for the first time.

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65

If the shooter makes the first shot, they get a chance at a second. With this, there is more at stake: adding more

points to their own score, or the possibility of a turnover, losing the ball to the offending opponent.

I met Dad in the emergency room. His face was bloody; his body wired. He wanted to go home. We waited

for test results and I talked to him about my day when his monitor alarmed—his heart rate tripled. A

rattling exhale. I ran out, screaming for help.

Winter weeds out the weak, but Dad was not weak. He was the strongest man I knew, six-foot-eight and

over two hundred seventy pounds, able to lift a soaked sheepdog from the lake while treading water, able

to lift me high enough to believe in my own dreams.

The nurses whisked him away. One knelt above him, her braid swinging with each compression as the bed

rolled around the corners to save him. I dropped to my knees. Through the wall, each charge and thump of

the AED left me curled on the floor.

Nurses ushered me into a waiting room where the lights flickered with my hope as I cried and prayed. The

surgery was successful: the blockage removed; a stent placed through his wrist. I took the elevator to

critical care with Dad, who was sedated and intubated in his hospital bed. All I could think was there might

not be any more bonus days.

Sometimes, in one-and-one, a player will intentionally miss the second shot to give their team the chance to

rebound, to score an extra two points on a field goal to the free throw’s one.

Dad was cleared with no restrictions. Because of the immediacy with which it stopped, his heart wasn’t

damaged. Still, I struggled with the suddenness: would it happen again? Would it happen to me?

On a fifty-degree Sunday after Thanksgiving, almost a year later, Dad and I drove through town. He

glanced at the lake from the driver’s seat. Sailboats floated in the still water, just enough breath of a

breeze to give them life. “Those guys are probably happy to be out there,” he said. “These are bonus days.”

“Yeah,” I said, glancing at the boats, focusing back on him.


66

Book Review

JALEN EUTSEY

Be Holding

Ross Gay

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020

ISBN : 9780822966234

Ross Gay's fourth book of poetry, Be Holding, is ostensibly a book-length rumination on Dr. J (Julius Erving)

and his unforgettable scoop-shot in the 1980 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, but we quickly

find out it's about so much more. Gay uses Erving's baseline scoop as the inciting incident for all of his

characteristic explorations of gratitude and delight pulled through a tunnel of grief. It would be fair to

argue that Gay can find delight almost anywhere, but one of the many geniuses of this work is the fact that

it refuses to shy away from the brutal realities that make that hard-won gratitude so vital. Gay

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67

interweaves the atrocities of slavery into a description of the book’s cover photo, a Farm Security

Administration photograph published in 1941 and shot by Jack Delano, which depicts a Black woman and

a young boy standing in a doorway:

and her muscled forearms are fortressed

across the diagonal striped pattern

of her dress which toward the knee has two holes,

and suddenly like that her dress becomes

a map of the trades,

the holes of the bodies

of islands cast in the windcombed sea,

In the acknowledgements, Gay sites Amiri Baraka’s “An Agony As Now” and a separate, unpublished quote

of Baraka’s as influences on Be Holding: “At the bottom of the Atlantic ocean there’s a railroad of human

bones.” Be holding is a book length balancing act of the unbelievably painful and the soaring of delight and

care.

The commodification of Black people is at the heart of the book and given its focus on historical

photographs and the footage of Dr. J’s move, Be Holding becomes both a sharp critique of the racial gaze/

our practice of witnessing, and a reminder of the still rippling effects of the very first commodification of

Black life. Gay indicts one example of reckless witnessing by examining Stanley Forman’s Pulitzer Prize

winning Marlborough Street Fire photograph, which depicts a Black woman and a young Black girl

plummeting from a collapsed fire escape. He writes:

—you have seen, I hope—

for in the photograph neither are they named

given as the photograph’s two titles

are Marlborough Street Fire

and Fire Escape Collapse,

and imply no violence or horror upon these two people,

Gay blows up one moment in history—The Doctor’s shot—taking a magnifying glass to all its pixelated

corners, stretching and melding that moment with nearly all of history. Movement like this makes

transitions a necessary precarity, but Gay manages it over and over with a sedated precision. Early in the

book he seamlessly slips out of a description of the flying Igbo myth and into a description of Dr. J’s flight

in the finals:

they shake loose and tumble from their ankles and wrists

erasing through the sky and into the sea

like names disappearing from a ledger,

hovering there like a school


68

looking down at us,

watching,

as Doc continues his flight

over the baseline,

his arm extended in the midst of its cyclone

Be Holding, from its first word to its final unpunctuated pause enacts the poetic practice of Witness. Gay

has taken up Nikky Finney's directive to “Be camera, black-eyed aperture” (from her poem “Instruction

Final: To Brown Poets from Black Girl with Silver Leica.” If you are planning on reading Be Holding, I

strongly recommend you read Gay’s essay “Be Camera, Black Eyed Aperture” published in the Sewanee

Review. In the essay, Gay expertly elucidates the power and practice of Finney’s work, her witnessing; and

we can clearly see how Finney is one of the many writers Gay is indebted too. Gay takes Finney’s example

and from it, builds his manual of flight and then embodies and enacts it in Be Holding.

Be Holding argues, through its careful, meticulous witnessing of Dr. J's aerial genius, that this iconic play is

a moment of the un-witnessable just as much as the mass suicide that inspired the legend of the flying

Igbo. Gay seems to argue that without this constant attending and re-attending we can’t actually know

how to witness Dr. J's inventive brilliance. And if we don't know how to witness one of the most famous

shots in basketball history, what else don't we know how to witness? Gay believes the way that we witness

the world can make the world and Be Holding is something of a guiding text for our practice of witnessing.

One of my favorite moments in the poem is one of self-reflection where Gay's speaker has to pause and

ask themself what’s being practiced:

one boy laying on his side

with a small stack of schoolbooks wedged

beneath his close-shorn head,

the algebraic equations tumbling

A few lines later the description comes to its reflective head:

and do you know while composing this

I almost dreamed some doom upon that child

dozing beautifully in my poem

dreaming now above the flying—

what am I looking at

what am I practicing

The titular poem of Ross Gay’s third poetry collection, Unabashed Gratitude includes these words:

no duh child in my dreams, what do you think

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69

this singing and shuddering is, what this screaming and reaching and dancing

and crying is, other than loving

what every second goes away?

In Be Holding, Ross Gay is once again saying, the tender, careful practice of reaching out towards one

another, “the reaching that makes of falling flight” despite the messy wreck of human experience, might

very well be everything!


70 CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

CHRIS ABBATE’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Cider Press Review, and Comstock

Review, among others. He is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award nominee and has received awards

in the Nazim Hikmet and the North Carolina Poetry Society’s poetry contests. Abbate’s first book of

poetry, Talk About God, was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. His second book, Words

for Flying, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.

CHRIS BELDEN is the author of two novels, Shriver (Simon & Schuster) and Carry-On (Rain Mountain Press),

and the story collection The Floating Lady of Lake Tawaba (New Rivers Press).

BRETT BIEBEL teaches writing and literature at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL. His (mostly very) short

fiction has appeared in Chautauqua, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Masters Review, Emrys Journal, and

elsewhere. His debut story collection, 48 Blitz is available from Split/Lip Press. You can follow him on

Twitter @bbl_brett.

KIMBERLY J. BROWN is the author of The I-35W Bridge Collapse: A Survivor’s Account of America’s

Crumbling Infrastructure (Potomac Books, 2018)—a finalist for the 2019 Minnesota Book Award in

Memoir & Creative Nonfiction. She is a recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant and a past awardwinner

of a Loft Mentor Series fellowship in creative nonfiction. Brown’s work has appeared in Puerto Del

Sol, Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose, Pride!, Sleet Magazine, A View from the Loft, and elsewhere. Brown

holds an MFA from Hamline University.

KEITH BUZZARD is a teacher, writer, and musician from the Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago. He

specializes in the odd, fantastical, and curiosities of all kinds. He has written short films and performances

for The Second City, iO, as well as various live shows across the midwest and west coast. If you enjoy

esoteric and niche jokes, follow him on Twitter at @KeithJDrazzub.

MORROW DOWDLE’s most recent publishing credits include The Baltimore Review, Oyster River Pages, and

Adanna Literary Journal. Her first chapbook, Nature v. Nurture was released in 2018 by Artagem Graphic

Library. Dowdle’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net awards. Dowdle

has also written a graphic novel, An Unlikely Refugee, which now has a permanent exhibit at the North

Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. In addition to writing, Dowdle works as a physician assistant in

mental health.

OWEN ELPHICK is a writer, performer, and creator from Connecticut, currently based in the Philadelphia

area. He is the author of Thoughts & Prayers (Wilde Press, 2019), a book-length sequence of poems

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centered around gun violence in America. His work has been published in The Hartford Courant,

CORRIDORS, Gauge, Stork, and Concrete, among other places. He is the Assistant Editor for The Hard

Work of Hope, a weekly poetry series produced by Mass Poetry in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Find him on Twitter and Instagram @OwenElphick.

BRYAN ERWIN is a software guy/sports fan from St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction has previously appeared in

Barrelhouse, Defenestration, The Oddville Press, and Turnstyle. Erwin is also the co-author of the true

crime book Slaying in South St. Louis.

JALEN EUTSEY is a poet, book reviewer, and sportswriter from Miami, Florida. He earned a BA in English

from the University of Miami and an MFA in poetry from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins

University. His work has been published in Into the Void, Northern Virginia Review, Florida Review Online,

Cellpoems, and others. He lives in Baltimore.

ANDREW GENT lives in New Hampshire where he works as an information architect. His first book, [explicit

lyrics], won the Miller Williams Poetry Prize in 2016.

JESSICA GREGG’s work has appeared in Broadkill Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Yellow Arrow Journal,

and San Fedele Press's Art in the Time of Covid. She has forthcoming poems in Global Poemic and

Canary's Summer Solstice Issue.

RYAN HARPER is a visiting assistant professor in Colby College’s Department of Religious Studies. He is the

author of The Gaithers and Southern Gospel: Homecoming in the Twenty First Century (University Press

of Mississippi, 2017) and My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry

(Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018). Some of his recent poems and essays have appeared in Tahoma

Literary Review, Wild Roof Journal, River Heron Review, Maine Review, Spoon River Poetry Review,

LETTERS, Cimarron Review, Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere.

ERIN HILL is a writer, educator, and Reds fan living in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Pro: seven-inning double header.

Anti: universal designated hitter.

PATRICK McGRAW is a freelance editor living in his home state of Minnesota. He moved to the East Coast for

college and to the West Coast for work. When community teams can hold practices again, he hopes to join

the local rugby team - his first time playing!

RICHARD MORIARTY teaches writing and literature at North Carolina A&T State University. He is also a

former fiction editor for The Greensboro Review. Moriarty’s stories appear in Stymie Magazine and Boog

City.

BARRY PETERS lives in Durham and teaches in Raleigh, NC. A former sportswriter, his publications include

The American Journal of Poetry, Best New Poets, New Ohio Review, Poetry East, Rattle, and The

Southampton Review.


72 CONTRIBUTOR NOTES

ALEX WELLS SHAPIRO is a poet and artist from the Hudson Valley, living in Chicago. He reads submissions for

Another Chicago Magazine and Frontier Poetry, and is a co-founder of 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.

CLAIRE TAYLOR is a writer who likes a good pitchers' duel and thinks the Biathlon is the most underrated

sport. She grew up playing soccer and softball but now sticks to short runs where she tries her best not to

pull a hamstring. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications and has even been nominated for a

few awards. Claire lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and online at clairemtaylor.com and Twitter

@ClaireM_Taylor.

MAYA WASHINGTON is a filmmaker (writer/director/producer), actress, writer, poet, Creative Director, and

arts educator. She received a BA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Southern California and an MFA

in Creative Writing from Hamline University. Her work has garnered awards from Jerome Foundation,

Minnesota State Arts Board, Minnesota Film and Television, and others. Maya is dedicated to projects

that have a sense of “purpose” in the world, selecting stories that illuminate some aspect of the human

experience that is untold, rarely seen, or might benefit from new approaches to issues of diversity and

inclusion, primarily in America.

AMY ZARANEK is an award-winning writer and the managing editor of The Black Fork Review. Her writing

has appeared in Yemassee Journal, matchbook, Stymie Magazine, and elsewhere, and her essays have

been anthologized in collections such as Our Best War Stories and Tales from Six Feet Apart. Amy holds an

MFA from Ashland University and lives and writes in northern Michigan. Visit her online at

www.amyzaranek.com.

RHONDA ZIMLICH’s work has been published by several literary magazines including Past-Ten, American

Story Review, Brevity, and others. She was also awarded the 2020 Nonfiction Award from Dogwood

Literary Journal, from Fairfield University. Zimlich teaches writing at American University and she enjoys

running the wonderful paths and trails around the DC area.

THE UNDER REVIEW

73


The Under Review - Issue 4 | Summer 2021

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