The Elysian Fields veer East coast-ward,
and if you’re looking down from Heaven,
you’d see someone on 11th street and Washington
had a crazy sense of humor.
In Hoboken they play baseball on the soft, swept grass.
In Hades, sunners sunbathe, relieved and insolent
like they’d won some game,
their good deeds shining back like a UV reflector
visible across the Hudson river
and the River Lethe.
All the while Tantalus sits nearby
contemplating suicide.
He fails to carry out the act,
realizing with a pitiful moan
that he is already dead—
but he quickly forgets.
He sits, benched
until another player walks by
then he says hey,
I’ll give you five bucks for your bat
at the baseball player’s turned back.
If you ever hear pitiful sobbing
choking from centuries-old bleachers
on the edge of New Jersey,
you are probably standing
at the gates of heaven
or the gates of hell.
Ellie Bozmarova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. Her work has appeared in The Common, phoebe, TIMBER Journal, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College and is the 2020 Women’s National Book Association-San Francisco First Place Winner in Nonfiction for an excerpt from her immigrant memoir, which is available for representation. You can find more of her work at www.elliebozmarova.com.