Take Me Out With the Crowd

The last time I walked anywhere
in a group was Halloween, 2019.
You were dressed as a baseball
player and I was a beat reporter:
three-piece suit and spectacled
with a panama hat and a flip pad
where I recorded your afternoon
quips punctuated by the popping
of double-bubble and Mom yelling
to remind us both to say thank you.

We walked along Huguenot Street,
stopping at each small stone house
as if we were toe-tagging the bases
on our way around the diamond. I
miss those crowded avenues, the
spontaneous smiles that could light
up the night like stadium fireworks.

From up here in the nosebleed section
of my apartment building, a 7-story
walk-up, I can see people beginning
to congregate on the city sidewalks
and in the park near the ball fields!
I can hear the roar of the crowds––
people shouting at one another out
car windows and through telephones,
across parking lots and intersections
like cross-town rivals hating each other
with the intensity of playoff hopefuls
as if nothing unifying had happened.

MATTHEW SCHULTZ is the author of two novels: On Coventry and We, The Wanted. His chapbook of cento paradelles is forthcoming from Beir Bua Press (January 2022) and his collection of prose poems is forthcoming from ELJ Editions (May 2022).