Published on: 7/9/2015
Poets Play Nine

Slam watches as his drive falls short and plops
into the lake. "I'll take my mulligan,"
he sighs, and tees another ball. We each
get one free pass, a second chance to hit
a shot we need here on the course. And as
we play we argue over lines and words
and images, and how we can revise,
recast, improve the outcomes of our verse.
But by the seventh hole we tire of that,
and conversation turns more personal,
to Slam's divorce and Mookie's child support
that makes him keep the job he'd rather quit.
We cool off in the bar, and total all
the scores, and measure our regrets, and know
again: there are no mulligans in life.