Opening Day

They catch their hearts in their hats.

They are bystanders in the land

of small green spaces, in the town

where the town accrues. Smoke,

in its tributes to weather, rises,

and signs the holiday. Team

is the ritual: to gather in spite,

and share the searing of grilled bounty:

the animals belong to us

that drift the hills,

that graze the rolling perimeters—

for we are always after land, and yet

a needle of street connects each home

to Stadium, strong as a root,

or a crack of lightning etched into a retina,

or the lips repeating an anthem.

Alec Hershman is the queer author of Permanent and Wonderful Storage (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), winner of the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize and The Egg Goes Under (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017). He has received awards from the KHN Center for the Arts, The Jentel Foundation, Playa, The Virginia Creative Center for the Arts, and The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design. He lives in Michigan where he grows marijuana and accompanies fellow service workers organizing for labor justice. You can learn more at alechershmanpoetry.com.