David

Michelangelo’s David and the baseball pitcher

have a lot in common.
That fraction of a second
when the mind goes
blank: you don’t know
how you got here, or what it was
you meant to do.
The same fraction
of a second the flash goes off,
someone screams “Surprise!” and you are
caught: permanently off-balance,
holding you-don’t-know-what 

while the man in front of you wields a mallet of some kind
waiting to strike.

ANDREW GENT lives in New Hampshire where he works as an information architect. His first book, [explicit lyrics], won the Miller Williams Poetry Prize in 2016.