Marissa McNamara

Marissa McNamara teaches English composition and creative writing at Georgia State University and in Georgia prisons and has taught at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival. She is also a contributing poetry editor for The Chattahoochee Review. Her work has appeared in several publications including the anthologies On Our Own and My Body My Words and the journals RATTLE, Assisi, Medical Literary Messenger, StorySouth, Muse/A, Memoir Magazine, The Cortland Review, and Amsterdam Quarterly.

Goal

Slashing today at run-ons and comma splices

I am a knight facing the enemy,

their papers armies to defeat. I shake my head

from on high, wondering at their words

that explain how the king so loved the queen

that he put her on a pedal stool,

but she took him for granite,

and try to remember that they have their own

unrequited loves, fathers who have left,

addicted sisters, cars that don’t run. Maybe

they are typing after third shift,

the baby just waking when they return home,

time only to feed her, to bounce her on a knee

while trying to type the right words,

the ones they think I want.

When I was six, the coach drew X’s

on the chalkboard, a goal box at either end

and arrows showing which way to run.

We practiced passing the black and white ball,

the one that came to me on that day when my father,

who had fastened my shin pads

and my tied my cleats with double knots,

cheered me on from the sidelines

as I dribbled back and forth down the field

just like I’d practiced. I felt the crowd’s heat, heard

the roar of 10,000 parents. Before the goal box

I stopped, swung my cleat and heard the words--

Run the other way! Kick it the other way!

The other way!

I lift my pen, hold my slashes and read

about the Lears, Henry V, Queen Hermione.

Sometimes I remember that grammar

means very little. That it is the story

that matters, the fact that they kicked the ball at all.