"Day and Night Handball."
[NO AUDIO]
"I think of corner shots, the ball hitting and dying
like a butterfly on a windshield.
Shots so fun and perverse, they begin
to live alongside weekends of sex in your memory.
I think of serves delivered deep to the left hand,
the ball sliding off the sidewall
into the blindness of one's body,
and diving returns that are impossible except on days
when your body is all rubber bands and dreams
unfulfilled since childhood.
I think of a hand slicing the face of a ball.
So much English that it comes back drunk
to your opponent, who doesn't have enough hands to hit it,
who hits it anyway.
Who makes you think of God and God damn.
The pleasure of falling to your knees for what
is superb, better than you.
But its position I think of most, the easy slam and victory,
because you have a sense of yourself and the court.
The sense that old men gone in the knees have.
One step in place of five.
Finesse in place of power.
And all the time the four walls around you
creating the hardship.
The infinite variety."