Reinvention                                                                                                     Daniel M. Shapiro

Someone dubbed Posvar Hall
the biggest tombstone in the world,
“Here Lies Forbes Field, 1909-1971”
etched on its face in Pittsburghese.
Inside, students wanting to be teachers
fill classrooms at the upper-deck level,
where chipped ham would jet into bellies
as outside-world meat potters wept in envy.
Across the street, from where Clemente
threw quick as morning-shift assembly lines,
a young woman sits, book in hand, her 3.93 GPA
on the books. Along one river stands a new stadium,
cocoon of nostalgia, cool core of bubbling steel
crossed with medium-rare stone, never to be sent back.

Daniel M. Shapiro is a teacher at Woodland Hills High School. He is the author of The 44th-Worst Album Ever (NAP) and Teeth Underneath (FootHills Publishing), and co-author of Interruptions (Pecan Grove Press), a collection of collaborations with Jessy Randall. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Chiron Review, PingPong, Gargoyle, RHINO, Sentence, Barge Journal, and Forklift, Ohio. His poetry website is http://littlemyths-dms.blogspot.com/