Joshua Bartee: Beckham County Has No Team (Poetry)

Beckham County has no team, but we
all love the Braves: Justice, Smoltz.

Scattered homestead tractors, redbud,
form archipelagos in the wheat,

and town, a tired heart, desolate clap-
board stations, peeling, and a gas pump.

Farmers head to town, visit the co-op,
talk beef and batting orders. The way

home is taken lonely: to watch Atlanta
on antenna, then the weather, drift 

off in recliners. The hope of someone wakes
them, brings them out of doors: they

look out, beyond the field, for coyotes
on the esker, hear the air buzzing with

wasps up at night, building hives
in he hayloft--the frogs sing too,

and crickets drone swift martellatos.
Television static: the ploughers have

forgotten--they drink, undress for bed,
read L'Amours washed with handling,

dream five hundred horses trampling down
an endless grassland, golden sabers

drawn, and Custer, terrible and sure--
or, as children, they run in diamonds,

in the same pasture, taking arrowheads.
Bent rabbit ears catch three channels,

the signals fail often in April rain,
and tornadoes all but kill them.

Tomorrow Maddux'll be on the mound,
and men milling around radios.

Joshua Bartee holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma and an M.A. in English Literature from Humboldt State University. He is currently a PhD student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he studies poetry and American environmental writing. he characterizes his poems as satirical and romantic. An avid road cyclist, he rides and lives with his girlfriend, Kaylee, and their dog Milo.