1ST PERIOD
We live behind
a ruined stadium.
2ND ROUND
I dream of weeping on ice skates,
Olympiad chorus swarming,
knife-bearing ceremony;
dream of burglars tearing books
and wake to the slumber of my son,
silence
of midnight hockey rinks hovers in the house.
3RD QUARTER
Be a good sport.
SUPERFANS
International pastime
eradicate silence
w/ idle syllables
weather, sports.
4am airport taxi pickup.
Interrogation: Patriots,
Red Sox, Bruins—
cartoon clubs.
Why not quiet?
Why not speak of death?
Why not the poetry
of government’s murderous intent?
Outside the end zone
of habitual exchange
I loiter on the grass
considering.
SPONTANEOUS MEMORY TOURNAMENT
Life is sports a choice a voice a vote to choke I saw a man with a dead basketball on his head the super fanatics devote your life opiate of the masses false sense of communal security billions of dollars teachers and sports pros who makes more money and impact?
Ritual #73: Saturday morning World Wrestling Federation on TV. Enthralling characters and epic battles, per the Federation’s plan. A ninja who had tattoo ideograms in neat rows across his face and chest. That captured me, not tattoos, but the idea of being covered in language, taken over, buried in it, awash with words. I want to write myself out of existence, like zipping up a body bag of invisibility. I want to cover my tracks with words. I want to be nothing. Only to exist in what’s left over.
Two teams two skins the sin of the win I saw in Ohio a man in summer costumed all Buckeye gear, his car maroon and streamers passing while I ate a burrito the size of a football.
DO THE WAVE
Sports are a virus
Elections are sports
Life is life or death
Time is a wager
Center stager
Constant talk
Overtalking
Silence walking
Sports of course
Horse trading
Cheater pumpkin-eater
Put on your rally cap
The dug out
Pissed my pants in left field
Highway to the danger zone
11th-inning stretch
ANTHEM
A poem human highlight film
A 21-line salute
A poem in Atlanta, GA
Tape for the knuckle line
Breaks a poem with enjambed thumb
A poem for Dominique Wilkens
A poem with a tight fade
A poem on the parquet
Backwards written poem A
Poem with a pump fake
ENVY OF MATADORS
All she left when she left:
a chest X-ray from Arles,
where she died, green-tongued,
lungs gurgling, for two
getaway days. I smoked
at the window, boiled
tea she couldn’t swallow.
Outside, shouting
men and bulls
rumbled like a river flooding
streets to the rubble
stadium of matadors; sword-
blades in the unconsidered sun
or lamplight I see through her bones.
HOME TEAM
I grew up in a house without a living
room television.
I grew up in a house that did not watch sports.
I grew up in a house with no home
team.
I played basketball.
I played baseball.
I played soccer.
I ran cross-country.
My mother would drive me to the field
and watch from the car.
I understand but cannot relate
to the behavior of sports fans.
We all want to belong.
We all want to be
part of something bigger
than a few meek feet of skin and bone.
The legend of the champion.
The grief of the gladiator
forever rehearsing lost triumph.
I grew up in a house with no home team.
OVERTIME
We die behind
a ruined stadium.
TEXT / Stephan Delbos
Stephan Delbos is the first Poet Laureate of Plymouth, Massachusetts. His poetry, essays, and translations have been published internationally. He is the editor of From a Terrace in Prague: A Prague Poetry Anthology (Litteraria Pragensia, 2011). His play Chetty’s Lullaby, about trumpet legend Chet Baker, was produced in San Francisco in 2014. His play Deaf Empire, about Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, was produced by Prague Shakespeare Company in 2017. His co-translation of The Absolute Gravedigger, by Czech poet Vítězslav Nezval, was awarded the PEN/Heim Translation Grant in 2015 and was published by Twisted Spoon Press. He is also co-translator of Nezval’s Woman in the Plural (Twisted Spoon Press, 2021), and the translator of Tereza Riedlbauchová’s Paris Notebook (The Visible Spectrum, 2020). He is the author of the poetry chapbook In Memory of Fire (Cape Cod Poetry Review, 2016) and the poetry collections Light Reading (BlazeVOX, 2019) and Small Talk (Dos Madres, 2021). A Senior Lecturer at Charles University and Anglo-American University, Stephan is also a founding editor of B O D Y (bodyliterature.com).
ILLUSTRATIONS / Mikoláš Zika
Graduate of scenography at KALD DAMU under the guidance of Robert Smolík. As an author of stages, costumes, puppet concepts, etc., he has collaborated with, for example, the Lampion Theater (Josef Lady’s Czech Christmas, Puzzle Mystery), the VOSTO5 Theater (Colonization – a New Beginning, Awakening), the Wariot Ideal ensemble (Flyers, Depths), the National Theater / Laterna magic (Garden), Experimental space NoD (Moonlight Sonata No. 11, Fantasy !, Bible 2), Damúza Studio, Ostrava Theater Stará aréna, Drama Studio Ústí nad Labem … It was part of the author’s productions for the Disk Pavilón Theater leaving a 49 bar.
He is a member of the art group TABULA RASA and the country band DINGO.
