{"id":11723,"date":"2012-02-06T22:00:59","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T06:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiken.wpengine.com\/news\/eight-ball-poem-by-claudia-emerson\/"},"modified":"2016-10-23T17:05:37","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T00:05:37","slug":"eight-ball-poem-by-claudia-emerson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/life\/eight-ball-poem-by-claudia-emerson\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight Ball | Poem by Claudia Emerson"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a time when a relationship is falling apart, sometimes the news of its failure doesn\u2019t come out of a mouth but from gestures. Claudia Emerson, who lives in Virginia, here captures a telling moment.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Eight Ball<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It was fifty cents a game<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

beneath exhausted ceiling fans,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

the smoke\u2019s old spiral. Hooded lights<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

burned distant, dull. I was tired, but you<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

insisted on one more, so I chalked<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

the cue\u2014the bored blue\u2014broke, scratched.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It was always possible<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

for you to run the table, leave me<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

nothing. But I recall the easy<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

shot you missed, and then the way<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

we both studied, circling\u2014keeping<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

what you had left me between us.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation,<\/a>publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.\u00a0Poem copyright \u00a92005 by Claudia Emerson, whose most recent book of poetry is Figure Studies, Louisiana State University Press, 2008. Poem reprinted fromLate Wife, Louisiana State University Press, 2005, by permission of Claudia Emerson and the publisher.\u00a0Introduction copyright \u00a92012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a time when a relationship is falling apart, sometimes the news of its failure doesn\u2019t come out of a mouth but from gestures. Claudia Emerson, who lives in Virginia, here captures a telling moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":233,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11723"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}