The Usual Entertainment

How the sweat-drenched vendors hawk

Old Styles to the drunken disorderlies—

who are us!—in the pilsner light

of August buzzing with gnats and lingo,

the umpire barking his commandments

like a clergy, the manager barking back

like a heretic. I douse my dog in ketchup,

and buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack

just for the toy and a small blue helmet

of soft serve for Jorge and a Polish for Mike,

and three cold-slicked beers numbing

our thumbs in the upper mezzanines

of the food chain in the city of my heart,

Illinois, where we lose so much more

than we win, but whatever the score,

I ask them, What use is the soul

without its tongue and its teeth,

without its nose for the cut of the grass,

its ear for the hum on the air, without its wants

and its words and no throat to holler them out of

to anyone glittering here in the sticky of the cheap seats?