Panic Attack
by Janet Reed
Duplex after Jericho Brown
As a girl, I listened to John Denver sing “Take Me Home” on AM Radio
and Bob Gibson throw fastballs and sliders for the St. Louis Cards.
On transistor radio, I listened to Gibson throw fastballs and sliders.
It was a summer of inside pitches I thought would save me.
At home, the inside pitch I thought would save me didn’t. I was set
to lose in extra innings to Bible-words on onion-skinned pages.
Words on onion-skinned Bible pages proclaimed me ready to marry,
a girl, pleasing to her Father. No one asked if I liked the boy.
Dad liked the boy’s new car, a Monte Carlo with a V-8 engine.
It was biblical like Elijah’s chariot and its whirlwind of fire.
He had the chariot, but I was in a whirlwind, praying for a knockdown pitch, dizzy sick in the leather seat, panic-panting, one out to go.
One out to go, dizzy sick, and panic panting in the boy’s leather seat,
I hit a strike with a hard-hit no and walked home, to a place I didn’t belong.
***
Janet Reed is the author of Blue Exhaust (FLP, 2019). She is also a multi-year Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web nominee. Her work has appeared in Sow’s Ear Review, Emry’s, Common Ground, Tipton Poetry Journal, and others. She taught creative writing, literature, and composition and worked post-retirement as a family success coach in Boone County, Missouri. She is currently finishing an MFA in Poetry at University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Comments