Paean to Soccer

Thank God the olden days are gone and ourselves lost
in the memory of the head of our enemy
kicked towards the goal. How that must have hurt 

the foot kicking. How that must’ve hurt
the pride of the one kicked. Just kidding! The dead
have no pride. They give themselves 

to the bitter earth and to the tired air, to the synchronized
insects and to us, to abuse however we wish.
The day is hot, the water hotter. We kick the head

to clear our heads. We pretend we are
getting somewhere, but the head collapses into the bruised field.
God smiles on us and our skin crackles 

with love. We won! Who said we won? Our hearts burst
with pride, the doctors say, but they burst
all the same. Sometimes a game is a life-or-death struggle. 

Sometimes all you can do is break
someone else’s leg. Thank God for the sport
of religion! We stretch on the sideline

but leave the field alone. There is no coming back.

Why I Don’t Write About Video Games 

It is not their inconsequence. It’s not the damage
they seed throughout the body. It is not imagination 

concretized, the drollery of dreams rolled by,
the middened mind made pixel-flesh. 

It’s not the escape we say it is. It’s not time
vortexed until the unwary thirsts to death. 

It’s not the faceless and unwitting friends.
It’s not the loneliness. It’s not the lack of loneliness. 

It’s not that we’re no longer responsible
for our dreams and our dreams deferred. 

It’s not the never-achievable, perfect representation.
It is not the silence-inducing cacophony of opinion. 

It is not the easy off, the begging button.

You I We Our Theirs

Your mind is racing like a pronoun. I was never
prepared for this complete annihilation 

of the self. All I am is my name, and now even that
is a fantasy. I sit on the bridge and count 

all the traffic that feeds civilization, each truck and car,
each person a you to you and an I 

to themselves. All of them. The road is clogged with arteries.
The sky is a fog of planes. On this planet 

is somewhere I can be myself, alone, unstained by comparison.
The waiter recommends the veal, though I’d prefer 

the venison. He suggests to everyone the veal. And it’s too late
to say No. The fork’s in our hands. We’re ready to go. 

Author’s Biography

Andrew Kozma’s poems have appeared in Rogue Agent, Redactions, and Contemporary Verse 2, while his fiction has been published in Lamplight, Daily Science Fiction, and Analog. His book of poems, City of Regret (Zone 3 Press, 2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award, and his second book, Orphanotrophia, was published in 2021 by Cobalt Press. He lives, writes, and edits in Houston, Texas.