Summary

"Gameplay." This evocative celebration of playing soccer is constructed in a series of rhyming couplets. Key letters in several words are capitalized and bolded and spell SOCCER.

"Wake Up Call." This single stanza poem describes how, while waking up after a late night of playing an online soccer game, “you” (2) wake up to hear your mother arguing with your father over the phone.

"Questions." The narrator’s mother comments on how much time he spent playing soccer on his Xbox. The narrator says his dad is not there and that he (the narrator) is “sick of reading his stupid words” (3).

"Why couldn’t your dad." As the poem continues the title, the narrator asks himself why his dad could not be something other than the linguistics professor that he is, particularly one who wrote a dictionary (“Weird and Wonderful Words”) with “footnotes” (4). The...