Scan
I wanted to watch the game.
The small room strewn
with magazines was too dark
to read in, lightless
but for the frenzied pulsing
of the muted screen
above the door, and for the
door which a nurse would open
now and again onto
a blazing corridor
that this one's wife or that
one's son, when called, would leave for,
or drift back from, dazed
either way, coming
or going, by the light
first, then the dark.
I wanted to watch the game,
I could tell that time
was running out by how
the white team, spreading
Alan Shapiro will publish two books in 2011: Night of the Republic, a book of poems, and Broadway Baby, a novel. His last book of poems, Old War, won the 2009 Ambassador Book Award in poetry.