John Gosslee

HER SPORTS GAME

You make a girl want you, she said
and pummeled my stomach like a boxer
hammers a speedball,

smacked my face side-to-side
like opponents volleying a shuttle cock,
then kissed me.

My chest was a mat in her hand
as she clipped a blue bobby pin on it,
then wrestled it off with her nose.

Her legs squeezed like polo mallets
quarreling over the ball.

She blinked like a catcher’s mitt,
clapped like the crowd
and I rested in the dugout of her lap.

—from Rattle #39, Spring 2013
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