{"id":961,"date":"2013-10-07T22:59:07","date_gmt":"2013-10-08T05:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/?p=961"},"modified":"2013-10-07T22:59:07","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T05:59:07","slug":"season-tickets-by-dan-gilmore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/?p=961","title":{"rendered":"‘Season Tickets’ by Dan Gilmore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSCF2471\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you ever had season basketball tickets, this poem will feel familiar. If you haven’t, it will become so. \u201cSeason Tickets,\u201d is the title. It is also the title of the book, by Dan Gilmore. He is a man of many talents, a jazz bassist, biz consultant, novelist, short story writer, raconteur and holds a doctorate in Great Expectations. He just recently has a bunch of poems accepted by a bunch of quarterly poetry publications. I don\u2019t know when because he is afraid to ask said bunch. His novel, \u201cA Howl for Mayflower,\u201d is filled with characters you would like to know because you like them. It is set in Tucson’s Coronado Hotel. The \u201cMayflower\u201d in the title is a lovely woman, one of the most attractive characters I have met. And I happen to know the narrator personally. You can get it through Amazon, and there is a Kindle edition. “Season Tickets” is out of print, but easy enough to find via Amazon used or Abe.Books.com.<\/p>\n

Season Tickets<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fifteen years we had them,<\/p>\n

the two seats at the end of Row 29,<\/p>\n

Section 20. We were real fanatics<\/p>\n

back then, screaming, high-fiving,<\/p>\n

thinking this would last forever.<\/p>\n

We hardly noticed when,<\/p>\n

seven seats down, a woman<\/p>\n

in her sixties, a city-league<\/p>\n

tennis player, stopped coming.<\/p>\n

Turned out she’d had a stroke<\/p>\n

and died. Next season the woman’s<\/p>\n

husband had a heart attack. During March<\/p>\n

Madness the person five seats down \u2014<\/p>\n

an irrepressible man with a white<\/p>\n

beard and a Greek fisherman’s cap<\/p>\n

who called himself Uncle Charlie \u2014<\/p>\n

died of throat cancer. Treatable<\/i><\/p>\n

was the last word we heard him say.<\/p>\n

Next season, Uncle Charlie’s nephew,<\/p>\n

a despondent accountant who<\/p>\n

quoted Rush Limbaugh, disappeared<\/p>\n

one day. Died from cancer, we heard<\/p>\n

from his wife who sold their tickets<\/p>\n

to a woman who was killed jaywalking.<\/p>\n

Her seat was empty the entire season<\/p>\n

but filled with waiting. JoAn is next<\/p>\n

in line, then me. The team is younger<\/p>\n

this season, less experienced, losing more<\/p>\n

than winning. JoAn and I watch<\/p>\n

with greater discernment, nod and clap<\/p>\n

instead of scream, take deep breaths<\/p>\n

between baskets, and look forward<\/p>\n

to time outs. An obese adolescent<\/p>\n

sits in the seat next to JoAn now.<\/p>\n

He eats hot dogs and yells Go Cats<\/i><\/p>\n

at odd times. We both wish him well and hope<\/p>\n

he lives a full and happy life, but it’s apparent<\/p>\n

he knows nothing about the game.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you ever had season basketball tickets, this poem will feel familiar. If you haven’t, it will become so. \u201cSeason Tickets,\u201d is the title. It is also the title of the book, by Dan Gilmore. He is a man of many talents, a jazz bassist, biz consultant, novelist, short story writer, raconteur and holds a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,34],"tags":[11,12,10],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-people","category-writers","tag-a-howl-for-mayflower","tag-dan-gilmore","tag-season-tickets","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auslander.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}