MISSION

SUBMISSION  FORM

EDITOR'S NOTE

ABSTRACTS

SCHOLARLY ESSAYS

SHORT STORIES
-Fiction
-Non-Fiction

POETRY

DATABASE

BIOGRAPHIES

PREVIOUS ISSUES

Basketball as Metaphor or Simile
Heath Weaver

we are all on the concrete basketball court
in the forgotten park,
the court with knee-high weeds growing between the cracks and along the sidelines.
we all shoot at the slanted and rusted rims with frayed nets and cracked plywood backboards
and we play with stored fury
up and down the cracked court,
ten mad men playing for or against
their own demons.
sweat beading and rolling,
making each madman slick and unique
with his own kind of hunger and stench,
making each crazy dreamer
a lone gunman.
we pound the worn synthetic leather ball
against the concrete and the palms of our twisted, fragile hands
until both bleed
and there is nothing left but the shot,
the elbow and the hard foul.
i dribble hard to my left,
hesitate,
cross-over,
then shoot a fall-away jumper
over the outstretched hands of my friend or enemy
or all the ghosts i have never met,
and that shot means the world,
makes us winners or losers,
and we play in the rain and snow and 100 degree heat,
fighting for all we once were
and believed we should be.
each shot meaning so much
until the next shot is launched,
and we keep shooting and sweating and elbowing each other
until we all bleed
and the game comes down
to one half-court shot
that never goes in.