Grotto Soul

For Brook Lopez, Center

Up here in stadium section 207, you are ordinary 

seven-foot man mountain. L.A. native slope 

of bluff ribbed rock. 

Under the hoop, men slam your rough-troweled 

weight, seashells rooted there like daggers, 

like teeth. You reduce men

to silt. Any trumpet of your genius and you roll 

your eyes into the grotto of your skull where 

superhero creeds scrawl. 

Didn’t I kill you already?

Oh my stars and garters.

Rats! I’m all out of spiders. 

LORA KELLER was voted Most Improved on her hometown’s first official girls’ basketball team after Title IX legislation passed. She still can’t shoot or dribble very well but, instead, writes about basketball. Her poems are widely published and earned numerous awards including a Pushcart Prize nomination. Early in her career, she was a journalist, scriptwriter, public relations executive, educator, and small business owner in Milwaukee, New York City, and Kansas City.