Red Sox? Now?

      Earlier tonight I was chatting with Laura Callahan, mentioning my raging writers block ("rage, rage against the shoe leather?") when she asked me to post this. Well, always happy to have fans, I am complying. But I am including the entire email sent that night, since "we" get to frame the "text" however we want, and for me, this text includes the informality of the email message sent with it. SO THERE, you cultural studies theorists. I framed the freaking text FOR YOU.





I have written a poem, since some of you could not be here in Boston for this "historical" occasion of the Sox beating the "Damn Yankees" in the ACLS. If
> you don't know why it's historical, I'm not going to tell you. It's enough to say that I am shocked and awed (allusion intended) at what I've seen this week, not just sports-wise, but community/tradition wise. For those who don't know, Northeastern students rioted when the Pats won the Superbowl, and NEU has a reputation for having "rougher" students (meaning not Ivy league) and the city councils are always blaming us for everything negative about the Fenway neighborhood. The culmination of which was a new police action plan, and the future release of all student identity information to the city for students living off campus. I'm frustrated, my students are frustrated, the profs are frustrated, and I just saw something I've only read about in 1984 , unfolding the last two days before my very caffeinated eyes. So, here it is. The title sucks. So do the Yankees.
P.S. Kari--can you forward to R Eric's address? I seem to have lost it...Chadd's too. And anyone else I've forgotten that you think would find this suckiness interesting? Thanks and peace. I hope.
Love Amylea, from the center of Red Sox Nation, unable to sleep for the chaos...

To all: A Mass Email in three parts
I.
It's 2:13 a.m.
The game has been ended for two hours and
the honking has continued in one mass GM motors blast across the city
across the Fens
into the Atlantic
So that Iceland has just received the first echoes
of our joyous moments
Those initial confused sounds of disbelief
Damon's grand slam that made me choke on
Potato chips and Swedish chocolate
and Now the cops are chasing
the sounds of honking
the bongo drums
the Hip hops
around the block in a figure eight
Storrow Drive
to Mass ave
To Westland ave
to Storrow again
and around the Fenway Drive (Marked with green on all maps, but mostly concrete paths for runners and rapists)
In rhythm to "Shave and a Hair cut"
Two Bits.

II
"Who's your daddy? Who's your Papi?
Here we go Red Sox, Here we Go!"
and the happy chants move from praise
to suggestions of what New York can do
in its new found spare time post season
And I am not sure that a city is capable
of doing said items; if so, watch for it on the news
for it will do more damage than the terrorists ever could.
The helicopters overhead blinking their lights
Remind me of X-files and Conspiracy Theory
(They've come around the block again: Honk Honk honk-honk Honk)
There will be a run on cough drops at CVS tomorrow morning
I've watched 16 hours of baseball in four days
and it was only by exhausting the spirit of the city
that the Sox maintained their chi with ease
We've been yawning (see www.boston.com for article
titled "Who needs sleep?")
in the office hours, abandoning mending walls for
trancending them (Grand slam from the White Jesus)
And we thought God would be mad at us
for closing half the Churches in town and selling
them for apartment buildings...

III
If I never hear another honk again, another
"%&$ the Yankees' big money!" or
"Red Sox kick ASS"
I will be happy
I could write something about
the rhetoric of fandom and the opiate of the masses
but I'm trying to restrain myself from throwing open the window
--this time in anger, head between the changing ivy--
and telling the post adolescent males
what they can do with their car horns
Something like
      consubstantiation (sharing of substance, Burkean Identification)the city, across the ages, back to
Bambino's curse--
     screw it all! Kamino kaze (the guardian's wind)
     blows colder and angrier into the night
     as Bambino's spirit retreats to gather strength
for Saturday
One might say the sound of (non)sense outside is
like the ocean
continual yet ever changing
but one would be a moron (the honking has now set off
car alarms in the parking garage above the Organic Foods store)
The third news helicopter, probably Fox 25 from way out near Framingham
is hovering over our neighborhood--look for the line of white
that runs tangent to the Prudential center
Those are the apartements next door that
go for $2300 a month for a one bedroom.
Rage, rage against the dying of the night
old men should waive their right outright
to claim it's Northeastern Students who fight in
streets by moonlight...
My dystopian playthings draw closer than ever
The police in black riot gear
helmets with gas masks on most
billy clubs out
Kevlar vests with headlight reflectors
marching in a familiar beat
(Could they be humming the Ashland High School drum cadence
as they tromp down the center of Westland?)
One car in front
four colums
eight rows
one car in back
facing straight ahead
--somewhere west of here,
they are going north as well, if they're
being all strategic like it's war--
and I pull Emma out of bed to say
"That, that I've never seen before.
That's. That is."
I lean against the cold radiator
my face against our window
(note to self, clean window tomorrow)
"Unbelievable."