DRIVING THROUGH IOWA
Angela Vasquez-Giroux
mid-July
the All-Star game on the radio
and there
under the lights
in the car
my daughter and me
scribbling in separate notebooks
in the backseat
nothing but corn
in all directions
bisected by
Interstate 80
and there’s a
baseball diamond
lit up
in the middle of it all
no bullshit
and someone
is playing
under the lights
when the play call comes through
Carl Crawford, “The Perfect Storm,”
robbing Brad Hawpe of a home run
my daughter in her yellow dress
and two braids
drawing a tornado
only a bit of light from the ball field
in the distance
between us
and I say,
Sometimes I want to burst with joy.
Or explode,
she says
the corn in all directions
like an echo.
Angela Vasquez-Giroux is a right-handed batting left center fielder on the league champion (Fall ball, lower division, 2009) Slugnuts. She has been a union organizer, canvasser, waitress, stay-at-home mother, reporter, bartender, pizza maker, barista, research assistant and writer. Angela attended Michigan State University where she met Diane Wakoski, with whom she continues to study. There she won three Jim Cash Poetry Awards – two first place – and the James D. Rust and Dorothy Yoshimori awards for her academic writing.
