National Poetry Month: Michelle Castleberry

Michelle Castleberry

"Stopped Clock"

(Michelle Castleberry)

If the concept of eternal return is true

then right now, the same as in January, 1986

my sister and father are watching basketball.

The Celtics versus the Pistons.

The players sprint in blue, white and green

between the goals, the squeak

of athletic shoes trailing behind them.

Daddy slurps his snack of cornbread

and buttermilk. Sissy tumbles a Ziploc bag

half-filled with water between her hands,

fidgety because the Celtics are down.

The frog-drone of sportscasters blankets them,

along with a blue wash of tv light.

The sports channels beam from a “high satellite”

which the wide, white dish in the yard tilts

all the way up to catch, like a child seeking

the origin of a raindrop.

Wind catches the lip of the dish, shifts it

and Larry Bird’s body undulates with static.

The game tilts, bodies dissolve and cohere.

It is important to note that the sports satellite

is close, at least on the dial, to the porn satellite.

The game commentary slides under  the image

of a barely scrambled threesome.

“The rookie’s looking good.”

“Johnson pulls up…and…misses the shot.”

Or Hypatia Lee chants the fourth vowel of the alphabet

over and over again, while Kevin McHale

(who, incidentally, resembles Peter North)

squints, aims a layup.

And some people say there is never enough time…

The two figures in the lenticular light

have been paralyzed for most of eternity 

and then some, playing chicken

with their own embarrassment

until Daddy utters one syllable,

that alpha and omega

of all awkward moments…

“Well,”

which my sister takes as her cue

to dash outside in coat and gowntail. 

She places one small hand  

on the burning cold metal dish,

wiggles it, looks hard toward the house.

Daddy, from inside, hollers “ok”

into the fireplace where the sound rebounds

up the chimney and out,

arcs into the night air

then lands, all net,

into her upturned ear.

"Stopped Clock" by Michelle Castleberry was originally posted at the Athens (GA) Word of Mouth website and read at the group's monthly gathering.  She is from Hermitage, Arkansas.  Her work has appeared in Six Little Things, Umbrella, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. She focuses on character studies, often with Biblical reference points; her performance of "Lot's Wife" and other poems can be heard on SoundCloud and on WUGA-FM's "Wordland" program. She is currently finishing her first collection of poems.