Prodigy Imitation By Sanjana Mahesh

The Game
By Sanjana Mahesh

I grew up with softball and a calculator

Athlete and nerd rolled in a sweet crescent

warm and welcoming I went along

following the game although the win wasn’t mine

The little mathlete that could

Much easier to excel when effort was praised

empty participation cups and trophies

while plaques with certificates framed

brain over brawn

told that it endures

enriches the mind

more than dinosaurs in the sandbox and

in exchange for fudgiscles

knowledge was bittersweet

instead of diabetes on a stick, melting away

the endurance would outlast

time itself

Prodigy
 BY CHARLES SIMIC

I grew up bent over  

a chessboard.

I loved the word endgame.

All my cousins looked worried.

It was a small house

near a Roman graveyard.   

Planes and tanks

shook its windowpanes.

A retired professor of astronomy   

taught me how to play.

That must have been in 1944.

In the set we were using,

the paint had almost chipped off   

the black pieces.

The white King was missing   

and had to be substituted for.

I’m told but do not believe   

that that summer I witnessed   

men hung from telephone poles.

I remember my mother   

blindfolding me a lot.

She had a way of tucking my head   

suddenly under her overcoat.

In chess, too, the professor told me,   

the masters play blindfolded,   

the great ones on several boards   

at the same time.