by Tim Suermondt

The Girl With A Pear on Her Head

She might be doing it for attention.
She might be doing it for amusement.

She might be doing it for no reason at all.
Better yet: she might be doing it
for a reason so modest it’s mysterious.

Imagine a politician with a pear on his head
when he pontificates. I can—and I think
I’m understanding what the girl is getting at:

worry about what causes harm—and remember
there isn’t anyone who’s too busy for Spring.

* * *

The Only Time Jesus is on the Court, 1979

He’s making every 20 footer.
It’s ridiculous.
People, agog,
are wondering if this guy is human.

He drains his 200th straight shot,
summons the ball
one final time, palms it
like the lesser god, Julius Erving—

bounces it to a group of young men
huddled alongside
the chain-link fence.
“Your turn,” he says, “and Peace to you all.”

He walks off in the direction of Chinatown,
his gray sneakers
gliding over pavement
as if the world were made of eggshells,

while the sound of Grand Master Flash
swaggers and rolls,
showboating toward Heaven
or the furthest regions of Planet Lovetron.

Tim Suermondt is the author of two full-length collections: Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007) and Just Beautiful from New York Quarterly Books, 2010. He has published poems in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Able Muse, Prairie Schooner, PANK, Bellevue Literary Review and Stand Magazine (U.K.) and has poems forthcoming in Mudlark, A Narrow Fellow and Plume Poetry Journal, among others. After many years in Queens and Brooklyn, he has moved to Cambridge with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.