The Trouble Ball: Poems

In this new collection of poems, Martìn Espada crosses the borderlands of epiphany and blasphemy: from a pilgrimage to the tomb of Frederick Douglass to an encounter with the swimming pool at a center of torture and execution in Chile, from the adolescent discovery of poet Omar Khayyám to the death of an "illegal" Mexican immigrant.

from "The Trouble Ball"

*On my father's island, there were hurricanes and tuberculosis, dissidents in jail

and baseball. The loudspeakers boomed: Satchel Paige pitching for the Brujos

of Guayama. From the Negro Leagues he brought the gifts of Baltasar the King;

from a bench on the plaza he told the secrets of a thousand pitches: The Trouble Ball,

The Triple Curve, The Bat Dodger, The Midnight Creeper, The Slow Gin Fizz,

The Thoughtful Stuff. Pancho Coìmbre hit rainmakers for the Leones of Ponce;

Satchel sat the outfielders in the grass to play poker, windmilled three pitches

to the plate, and Pancho spun around three times. He couldn't hit The Trouble Ball.*