by Kevin Young
length 27 I think, a yellow
plank lathed
off some tree in Kentucky.
I swung that Slugger
often as I could
not knowing Clemente
except what Dad had told me—
he was a man who loved
people, who tried
doing good
so was dead. Later,
when our racist neighbor
wouldn’t let me spin
on her swing set—
You can play, she said, freckled,
aiming a finger at my friend,
but he can’t, calling me out—
I thought of my Clemente bat
that, off-duty, Dad leaned
in the front closet in case
anyone dared break in.
So when
she went & called me an N—
I called her Honky back.
Stung, she yelled
for her daddy, who emerged
no matter what she’d said
& threatened me
from his short porch
till I split—some black kid
who dared talk back
like Clemente’s bat.
Even then
I knew you weren’t
supposed to do that.
Only later did I learn
Clemente
means mercy.
[ PRACTICE ]
We’d play pepper
or 500
for hours. Past dusk
I’d ricochet
a racquetball against
the garage or the side
of our complex, invent-
ing games, or plays
to save the ninth. Every pitch
a strike, each catch
kept us from losing
the World
at home. Reenactors
of our civil war,
the Yankees would knock off
our Sox every time. Pitch
by pitch we rehearsed last night’s loss
in the playoffs, begging
for one more inning.
Can I still say I loved Reggie
Jackson bars, saving all
my rancor
for the Hollywood Dodgers?
After all, Mister
October looked
like my father—afroed,
mustachioed, furiously
arguing with all
he had endured
even as he saved
someone’s day. Only night
would send me
inside, where the light
gathered, pooling
in our living-room lamps—
their bulbs, bright
as a tulip, if touched
turned to a line drive
searing your palm.
[ THE DIVISION ]
We played in blue jeans
unlike other teams
in their tidy PAL uniforms
the cops paid for.
We were outlaws, our hats
dark, maroon shirts
with our names on the back,
skin black
& brown & in between—
we played a mean
game, if only after
a season of being
the Bad News Bears, losing,
umps even invoking
the mercy rule some games.
We’d wake
& pray for rain.
Or an ankle sprain.
One day something
gave way—the spokes
they turned & all
of a sudden we won,
beating teams twice
our size who’d skunked
us before, giving goose eggs to kids
in golden sleeves
& tall corn-yellow socks, their new cleats
aimed at our shins.
We were our own Negro League.
Our mascot was Reggie,
chubby, goofy,
Marcel the relief
& Damien our best pitcher, his long nails
stabbing the stitches—
his windup quick, change
clipping the corner of the dish.
I even saved one game—bases loaded,
the bullpen spent
or gone wild—the backup
pitcher’s backup, I threw slow
but straight, the final strike
turtling across the plate.
The team hoisted me high that night.
Our fathers for once smiling wide.
Our final game we took first place
& won the division, the sore
faces the losing team wore
less shock, or disbelief—
that you could take—than disgrace
& plain rage. The mask
of their catcher tossed
into the Kansas dust.
Anger sat there, uneasy—
& too easy—even
their parents hated us, claimed
to have forgotten our trophies.
Who cared if they couldn’t take
watching us celebrate?
That, for the required final handshake
good game—good game—
they christened their palms with spit?
Later, we’d wash up clean—
& sprinkles or chocolate dip hid
our ice cream, vanishing.
Ode to the Harlem Globetrotters
VS. THE WASHINGTON GENERALS
Because they always win.
Because Meadowlark Lemon.
Because for them, double dribbling
is literal.
Because on your finger
your knee, toes
& elbows, the world can spin.
Because the ball
on a string.
Because rubber bands for hands.
Because the ball a banner.
Because where else do Generals
meet defeat without blood.
Because the best offense
is a quick depantsing.
Because mercy, not pity.
Because the bucket
of water tossed
on the cries of the crowd
turns like tears to confetti.
Ashe
For years I’ve wanted to write
how exactly I felt
with you hovering
on my wall, framed, mid-
air, about to strike
the ball above you,
Arthur Ashe—in your tennis whites
I pictured you lifted
into whatever came after
this photo’s instant—firing
a volley, or striking a serve
down the throat
of your opponent
like a pill.
Your signature
below my name
seemed more real to me
than most things—bullies,
or whatever wisdom got cracked
out of me like a knuckle—
more real than being
unable to see without glass
before my eyes. I saw you
sported glasses too.
Your hair a microphone cover
to help keep
the stat
ic down. Even
your photo has a sound—
call it About to be.
Call it Maybe—
no, Probably—
name it
after every unlikely
you made into something.
You swing
in my head like Count Basie
only there’s no
royalty, no music anymore
like yours.
Shirts & Skins
I was ten when
Mike Smiley, half-Indian,
skinny, brown-skinned,
brought the word jigaboo
to school
like lunch, or the flu,
fed him by his adopted
white father who said
that’s what we called
them then. By noon
it was done—everyone
had a name for what had been
bothering them, some
thing utterly human
as hate. Language feeds
——
on need, however strange
it may be—take
nigger knocking for ringing
the door of some stranger
or friend, then ditching,
watching from the shrubs
after the toll—
I never knew
which of us was supposed
to be the spook,
or just spooked,
how pretending to be no one
was any fun.
I had enough
of that one
——
hugging the roller
rink wall
during Snowball—
the referees, underpaid
zebra-striped employees,
picked with amazing accuracy,
somehow knowing
the exact girl
to play Eve. She’d cruise out
to the latest ballad
& pick her perfect mate
for a slow skate
then a whistle would sound
& like the Farmer
in the Dell, each partner picked
one more. And so on.
Soon the rink an ark
of what everyone thought
or secretly loved—the center
growing bigger
& whiter—
——
Stephanie slowing
unlike my heart, then
picking the fat kid next to me,
his face red as grapes
while she skates
backwards with him away.
Paper covers
rock, shirts
beat skins. Soon enough
when Human Nature
scratched on
I knew to hit
the arcade, getting good
at Defender—
warp speed—
——
mouthing every
word. Sixth grade
you didn’t survive
just endured.
Mostly life was Kill
the Man with the Ball,
or Smear
the Queer—
the football a prayer
clutched against
your chest, outlasting
even this. I was hard
to catch, King
of the Hill
in a town with only one
——
to its name—a sacred place,
some said the Indians said,
& so long as no one built on it
the tornado wouldn’t come.
Of course they put up
a water tower to watch over
cars that parked there, darkened,
steamed—Tell them
that it’s human nature—
& soon after a cyclone arrived
& ate half the town.
Winners talk, losers walk. How
I hoped to outrun those arms,
to leapfrog
all tacklers the way madness skips
——
a generation. Kids
I sat by for years,
or walked back from school with
since we were ten, now
down the wide hall
of high school would call: Minority
go home. I never did ask
Where’s that? Their words
a strong, hot
wind at my back.
I doubt it
It’s as if you
have died when I head
into your room, only
its ageing bears
tucked in at night,
everything just
as you left it, but quiet—
to switch off the lone
night light—though you
are just down
the street at our neighbor
boy’s sleepover, turning
nine tonight, where, surely,
you barely sleep.
I bet you’re up drinking
apple juice the way we once
downed soda or pop
or root beer, RC
or Atari by the liter, playing war
& bullshit—
what we code-named I doubt it—
though we boys were full
of confidence. Sleeping bags
a war zone where nobody died
or got sent home—
where we’d play-fight
& camp out & need no light
to keep us company
till dawn. This is how
we learnt about tomorrow—
when I will wander
over & tug you back
where you also belong—
by the hand, somewhat
awake, sleeping
bag under your arm
empty as a chrysalis.
TWO
On the Atchison, Topeka & the Santa Fe
Ad Astra Per Aspera
[ WESTERN MEADOWLARK ]
Land of unlikely.
Land of no sea.
Land of all you can eat.
Land of seventeen.
Land of silos,
missile & otherwise.
Land of squinting eyes.
Land of wheat & milo,
land of bejeweled jorts.
Land of A & W,
of Gates Bar.B.Q.
These are my dressiest shorts.
Land of grey ash.
Land of acid wash.
Land of winded cough,
of neatly piled trash.
Land of squat buildings
& broad, slate sky.
Land of land neverending.
Land of doesn’t matter why.
Land of soft serve.
Land of Deadman’s Curve.
Land of lost mutts.
I’m not racist but—
Land of summer severe.
Land of persevere.
Land of nothing near.
Into this here
strode tall John Brown.
In one hand a Bible,
the other a rifle,
face more scowl than frown.
[ AMERICAN BISON ]
How old were we
<
br /> when I entered the capitol,
word I still misspell?
I’d been a spelling champ
& popular sidekick,
the class clown Tom Crook’s
best friend till I moved to town.
Here I was no one.
Here I was
just another
face among the class
trudged beneath the copper dome
atop of which an Indian archer
sculpture now crouches—
meant as a compliment I’m sure.
We had climbed the marble
divoted steps, jostling
to better see
when we saw it:
John Brown
muraled, arms thrown
wide, beard afire, dead
soldiers smoldering
at his feet. Holy me—
how to unsee those eyes
wild-wide like a mouth?
Behind him a tornado
tearing up the plain—
which would never be
that way again.
[ SUNFLOWER ]
Some point their toes
others hold their noses
as they hurl themselves
into the blue—
the pool a paradise
of typoed tattoos,
young girls dressed
as women, high strung,
& mothers dressed as girls—
the men, shoulders
peeling, suck in
their guts, or wear
shirts underwater, acting
natural. My son
thin among them wading
& grinning, flops
from the high dive
onto his back with a smack.
We curl down the slide
one at a time,
blue light at the end
the color of dusk later
that evening, after reading
at the Brown v. Board site,
when Skoog,
Fox Averill & I
watch our sons
wheeling frisbees
against the dying
of the light.
Fox now an orphan
& Skoog & I
who both lost a parent
a week or two apart—
who, back again in what
once was home,
would drink & mourn
in Topeka’s sole
non-chain bar,
now closed. We’d shut
