No Exit

by Charlotte Udziela

Hey, if you’re reading this 
could be you know
my dad used to be this hotshot
baseball phenom 
only he didn’t make it which 
of course is an existential dilemma: who
gets to the Show and who does
not, who has the pinpoint throw or the curve
that fools, the fastest legs, the velcro
glove. Sartre wouldn’t get that.

But Camus, who knew how the sun
blinds and desert dirt tastes, might have had it 
in him to ponder the absurdity of
sweltering somewhere in southern
Indiana, lurching from town to
town in a rust bucket bus,
washed up but still wearing 
that easy lopsided smile 
clutching that lucky bat

‘though his legs were giving out 
not unlike Sisyphus. 

Me, I never learned to
keep a score card — it is how
you capture the half-life
of innings and the best
innings are not too short, or too long like
when the flag out in center field flags 
in the bottom of the ninth with no men out, 
the peanuts starting to taste stale,
your pencil point breaking. 

You always wonder
if this inning really is the Last Exit or if there
is No Exit from the game as you 
remind Sartre that if you pass the 
salt shaker without putting 
it on the table first, you will
never get a hit again.
Camus would get that, 
how life drowns in the
white-hot day game shimmerings, 
the sweated out flannels, 
the scuffed chalk lines

of what’s not to be.