When it rained,
we had class
in the gym
where, at center court,
there would be equipment
from bygone eras.
Relics of our fathers,
or our fathers’ fathers’
physical education
from simpler times
when hula hoops
and pogo sticks
were roller rink crazes,
from back when
our ancestors
square danced
in barns to crackling
records which spun
like rings around
the planets.
They grew up playing
boring games called
World War
and Great Depression,
that smelled so old
and musky to us
back then.
Ed Wade expatriated to Hanoi, Vietnam in 2012. There, he plays for the Hanoi Dragons Rugby Union Football Club and the Hanoi Dinhers (pronounced ‘Dingers’) softball team. He writes and lectures for the Professional Communications Department at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. His work has appeared in Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, The Broken Plate, and Ajar, where his poems were published in English and Vietnamese. Currently, he is compiling poems for a chapbook tentatively titled Chopsticks.