ke rry
james
e vans
Kerry James Evans
Copyright 2025
Photo Credit: Jason Lee Brown
Kickball Cowboy
by Kerry James Evans
From Nine Persimmons (The Backwaters / University of Nebraska Press, 2026)
First appeared in The American Poetry Review
One day in third grade, I grew tired of being picked last for kickball, so I showed up to school in a pair of faux leather cowboy boots my grandfather rescued from a dumpster. It worked. I was picked first and on my first attempt, my pointy boot hit that red rubber ball dead center, doink, into the outfield, doink, into Trey’s face, doink, down the line. I scored six runs, leading to the annihilation of our opponents. If my teammates were strong enough, they would have carried me off the field. Alas, they, too, were only third graders, but they had their champion, and I had their love, at least until lunch, when my new-found fame would be usurped by the runny cheese of nacho day, but O, how I sat in the warm rays of victory, trying to memorize math tables, while Ms. Spelling took her secret nap. I wonder if she ever dreamt of robins pecking the earth that made us. Well, the making goes on, doesn’t it? On the school bus home, my kickball cowboy dreams came to an end when I pissed off the wrong kid—two years older, mean daddy, called me a braggart. Admittedly, I did say I was the best kickball player in the state of Alabama. To this day, I have not been disabused of such a notion. However, on that day, Ricky, with his penny freckles, punched me many times. I lay there for what felt like an eternity within a somehow larger eternity (a nesting doll sort of nightmare). Finally, I kicked. I kicked and kicked and kicked again—pumping my legs like pistons in a souped-up, small block V8, which pissed off Ricky even more. I found my courage, sure, but he stripped me of both boots, and whoosh, out the window. Did I have it coming? Some of it, definitely, but my boots? I mean, they were two sizes too big, but think how many years’ worth of homeruns they had left! That’s all I could think about at dinner, how it was just the beginning: me and those boots—all that room for my toes. Mom was beside herself: He did what? I told her I deserved it—I was bragging, I explained. About what? I was going pro. I’d have a celebration dance, endorsement deals, a condo on South Beach, wherever the hell that was. James,what were you bragging about? I shrugged, sore from the bruising. Kickball, I said.
About
Kerry James Evans is the author of Nine Persimmons (forthcoming from The Backwaters Press/University of Nebraska, 2026) and Bangalore (Copper Canyon), a Lannan Literary Selection. He earned a PhD in English from Florida State University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University–Carbondale, and a BA in English from Missouri State University.
The recipient of a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, his poems have appeared in Agni, The American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and many other journals.
He is an Associate Professor of English at Georgia College & State University, where he serves as the Program Coordinator for the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs. He is the Co-editor & Managing Editor of Peach, launching spring 2027. He lives in Milledgeville, Georgia.