clay pebble court
reserved hit the ball
against the wall by the
web of this hand, I serve
concrete to black skin
culled from forearm to
wrist to racket hit the ball
against the wall
Fathers tucked their newspapers under their elbows,
And arose to applaud the Celtics, and the stoic and regal Bill Russell,
Who was winning for Boston, despite fighting every neighborhood except Roxbury;
Russell couldn’t get a home in a white neighborhood, but established estate in the paint,
Hauling in 24 boards while setting the pace.
Gone eight months, I still write his name
on my scorecard. He’d shake his fist
after each flubbed shot—one off a tree,
two in the woods, driving his ball
On New Year’s Eve I sit in a hotel bed
with my dad, who’s taken me
on visitation this week,
watching stuntman Robbie Maddison,
all decked out in Red Bull blue,
attempt to jump his motorbike up a ramp
and onto a ten-story building. He has to hit
a continent away from ringside,
cinema seat at a further remove.
To prepare, I dog-ear Liebling’s
The Sweet Science, returning
to when people of all classes
rubbed shoulders to savor hook
No one can blame him for wanting
to play for the Boston Celtics. I myself
would have played for the Boston Celtics
had I grown up a little differently
and a little taller. Forgive me,
for my father has taught me
Asthmatic, my father couldn’t run
the length of the yard, spent his boyhood
winning breath from an oxygen tent.
He learned, instead, to read whole stories
from statistics in the Baseball Almanac:
shutouts, short seasons, sacrifice hits.
Again, the sheriff’s boat looking,
looking, covering at barely
a chug the part of the gorge
where we row -- it tries
to glimpse a t-shirt, a shoe.
Now, at the end of our practice, revs up,
speeds downriver, making a wake
that gathers form and froth
in 1979 I discover
I cannot roller skate
and that in this pursuit at least
I am in the minority
& I hesitate to receive the past week I’m more of myself than ever
I stare at my reflection for eleven. uninterrupted minutes & decide
this place, my childhood home became a different person
Bare, bird-chested boys play touch
football in the street, reenact
WrestleMania in the fenced-in front yard.
When an errant pass rocks a mailbox
the whole block takes off running.
It wasn’t until I left & came back like a field
of perennial flowers after a long winter that I
understood what it meant to exist as a ghost
to people I’d known as if we didn’t all
ditch class & sit under the same rusty bleachers
searching for ways to believe in fragility
Two ropes
and the girls
oscillating—quick
turn all around
feet. Their voices
somehow flat
and birdsong,
touch the ground
Last night I dreamt of my dissertation-
the committee was a trio
of cocky frat boys:
all bared teeth, baseball caps, and bravado
and the thesis I had to defend
was me—
How voluminous noons stood sideways
to tell forests the hovercraft flies.
I’ve lost track—never ran track,
despite Dave’s deepest aspirations.
We sure razored the boomerang though.