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FURTHER READING
Poems About Sports
A Boy Juggling a Soccer Ball
by Christopher Merrill
After Skate
by Carol Muske-Dukes
Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
by James Wright
Baseball and Writing
by Marianne Moore
Casey at the Bat
by Ernest Lawrence Thayer
Days of Me
by Stuart Dischell
Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
by Billy Collins
Night Baseball
by Michael Blumenthal
The First Olympic Ode [excerpt]
by Pindar
The Trouble Ball [excerpt]
by Martín Espada
To An Athlete Dying Young
by A. E. Housman
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Séance at Tennis

 
by Dana Goodyear

I play with an old boyfriend, to tease you out. 
In white shorts that you’ve never seen before.
You storm—wind, panic in the tree.
Rattling like the genius
like the jealous man.
Making it impossible to hit.
So nothing clears the net.
An inside joke, my comingback love:
He can’t return, but you can?

After an hour, the court is swept, and reassumes
the waiting face of the bereft. But you—
the sky turns blue with your held breath.






"Séance at Tennis" is reprinted from Honey and Junk by Dana Goodyear. Copyright © 2005 by Dana Goodyear. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
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