Dan Stryk
Boat People’s Softball Game
1997—Dekalb, IL
memory of a scene witnessed on a Sunday stroll
past a public housing project for naturalized
Vietnamese refugees, in a farmtown west of Chicago
Nervous chatter like a hum, they cluster
round the fruit-punch bowl, photos snapping
ceaselessly, on a day 90 degrees. Those grinning
wives & wide-eyed kids then roam back
to the batting cage, photos snapping faster
now, to cheer their awkward menfolk on,
in their fast tongue—so proud of them,
so far from home—as they wave back from this
American game (photos snapping faster now),
sweat spraying from their tossed black
bangs—roped ponies prancing in a strange
corral—their laughter shrill, as they grin back
from the hectic field, at every lunge & foul.
