Brown
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the place down then too,
whiskey downed & burning
like grief—not picturing
that one day we’d feel
anything, much less anything
else. Yet here
they are, our children—
Fox’s son older,
throwing with a beer
in his hand, mine
loud with a mouth
full of braces, cuts,
& little Oscar
in the pachysandra, foraging
for stray shots.
Winging
dark discs
past our heads like bats
near-blind & swooping—
night a net
now thrown around us—
in dusk
our boys’ bodies grow
as hard to see
as hope.
I think of how
when first invented,
the flying
disc was free
& what cost—
tonight you can
almost feel it—
was the invisible rope.
Phys. Ed.
[ WARM UP ]
Between Language & Health
perched Gym or Phys. Ed.
or whatever they called our removing
what fit & changing into our clashing
school colors. My t-shirt dubbed me
YOUNG, something barkable, one
syllable. Those without uniforms
lost grades or got loans; those
with boners in the showers
got beat up. Edsel, once caught
beating off in a stall, would rub
the backs of his knees with green
deodorant, he said to keep cool—
this, long before we heard how to stop
sweating & smell, lectured in the male art
of antiperspirant while the seventh-grade
girls learned about blood
during third period. That talk
we only got wind of later.
[ TUMBLING ]
Stringer was a rumor,
former Olympic wrestler
now overweight gym teacher
sent down river
to Marjorie French Middle School
for hurtling some poor fool
who told him off in high school
down the stairs. A whole
bloody flight. Once
his ham-sized elbow staked my chest
to demonstrate pain—
a pin—his face a fist.
Floundered high & dry,
glasses-less, I counted rafters
blurry & regular
as the times Stringer yanked out
the tucked shirts of handstood girls
whenever he spotted their legs,
laughing. How often he stared
while they changed—
those girls who tumbled
while we wrestled—
Stringer playing
pocket-pool
& losing, scratching
himself, all eightball,
no cue.
[ DODGEBALL ]
When Mrs. Ostrich blew
the whistle, the whole
high school knew
that meant business—she’d call
us sissies
or girls for running
too slow. Lazy himself, after
teaching Study Hall, Coach Gray
had a cow if we looked at all
tired but put in a soft word,
a good hustle for every
Amy or awkward devil
who couldn’t swing
to save their lives, much less
break a tie. He never
bothered to teach them
a thing. The gym echoed
the tons of times those two
coaches met, hidden among
the Driver’s Ed cars
or the dull
steel-tipped arrows
& half-deflated dodgeballs
that hibernate till spring—
the duo doing
their tug-oh-
war thing.
[ BLEACHERS ]
Johnny Henry, no angel, managed
to wrestle one—not the father
who beat him silly, not his mother
who’d split or the seventh grade that could
smell him coming; nor the health teacher
who taught Johnny how to wash & not go
in his pants; nor Coach De Mann who gave him sneakers
for gym, making him wait so everyone knew
the poor white kid was him—but one short
school year later, his chest grown half as wide
as his height, Johnny Henry could lift
more than twice his weight
off the bench press, smear
other kids with some newfound
strength. What could anyone say then,
pinned like a butterfly to the mat? He won
every meet we wrestled, met
each opponent like a seraphim,
many limbed, wiping
the smiles from chubby
cherubs, putting them in a cradle
or ball & chain while we stomped
the stands, chanting
Pin! Pin!—the bleachers
calling again
again his brave
two-fisted name.
[ PRACTICE ]
Each afternoon for hours
our bodies weren’t
our own—we’d have
to run, give Coach
twenty,
then Ready: Wrassle.
Nabus, nicknamed
Tonka cause he was squat
& tough as those toy trucks,
could climb the gym’s ropes
thirty feet using only
his hands. Once
I watched him
about to be pinned, then
stand up with a kid
across his hairless chest
& slam him for the win.
With some whale splayed
on our stomachs,
we’d practice bridges
arcing on our heads
for hours, hoping to build
necks & break
chokeholds like backs.
I still have the letter
jacket, won mostly
by making 98 weight
all fall easy.
Still I’d drink
only spit
for days, swallowing
insults about my family
& skin, the way
teammates would call you spook
then beg you for food
before a meet. On buses
boys practiced becoming adults—
lying about girls,
playing rock, paper,
scissors for pain—then rubbing
the ears of enemies
till they bloomed
into cauliflowers. Whenever
anyone asked
to share, I’d hock
into my sandwiches,
put the halves back
together, then swallow
them slow.
[ CITY ]
In his office, Coach De Mann said
I ha
d it made & could win
City if only I put my mind
where my body was, applied
myself. That season I lifted,
ran stairs, wore three layers
of sweats to slim sleep. All winter
in trash bags I jogged to Russia & back,
dreamt steak, no fat. The drinking
fountain we ran laps past
ringed in launched loogies
stayed unsipped.
On the meet-bound bus
I watched boys spit out pounds
in Kwik cups—heard tell
of magic saunas & miracle,
ten-pound
dumps. One Coach made my friend
drop a whole class, cutting
from 112 to 105 overnight;
Tim bought PMS pills to lose
water, the cashier staring back
at him blank as his Biology
test the next day
when he passed out cold. Watched
another kid shave—rusty razor,
no cream, no mirror—
when some ref deemed
his teenage stubble
a weapon—
in the warped
metal of the paper towel dispenser
his chin bloomed stigmata.
After I told Mom I knew I’d win
she only half-
believed me, said hope
was good to have. Later I waved
to her from the podium
after winning City, my smile as long
as the shot she’d thought I had.
How I loved
Coach & his belief,
the medal mine. Earning
my letter jacket’s giant T,
I was called to his office, I thought
to shake hands. Instead he asked,
You can dance, right?
Why don’t I moonwalk
for him & the boys?
A ring of fellow coaches grinned.
Stunned, I did not laugh
or dance or do that backwards
glide he wanted—I still haven’t a clue
which race he thought
he’d have me run—my medal
long lost—that sunny morning
right before Life
Science, long after History.
Ice Storm, 1984
The lines for power & speech
freeze, then stiffen & fall—
thrown back into dark
we hear the radio tell the town
what we already know—
last night’s storm iced over
everything, yet hurt only
half Topeka’s houses—wiping
away windows, we see some
homes, doors down, still bright
& inviting as snow. Here our heat
has ended—we have only wood
& whatever warmth
won’t escape
like gossip. Power out,
our freezer starts to thaw—
we keep meat out back in drifts.
USD 501, name like a grade
of beef, cancels—
no Civics, no Language
class, no Western Civilization.
How many mornings
had I stalled, dressing
by the faint radio, praying
the airwaves would list
my school among the saved?
By evening, the thrill of hooky sours
as our house pours
into dark & cold, nothing
like the brief candle-warmth
of brownouts when lightning
would keep us from touching
metal, or each other, for fear
of shock. Dusk starts
here like horror-movie
houses abandoned
& adrift—phone line
cut like an anchor,
the killer in shadow
behind every door. Nothing
lasts—neither food
nor warmth, yet Dad
won’t leave our glacial living
room, stubborn
as the mule we’d ride around
unsaddled down home. He burns
wood while Mom gathers
our things & her son, saying
she’s had enough dark
childhood nights to outlast
a life. Heading blocks
away it feels we cross
a century—tiptoe
through the blackout
across slick, lit ice
to our neighbors’ kind house
full of bright bulbs, running
water. We’ve arrived.
Civilization, Mom laughs.
In their carpeted
basement rec room, I shoot
pinball when the son
lets me play—the coffin talks
if hit with
enough English—
after he flips off the lights
our faces flicker in the pretend night
like the father I picture
by the hearth, fire dying
like laughter. Who knows what
he eats, curled up
mammoth & woolen
with a fifth aged
amber as skin.
Phoneless, we return days later
to find him, unmoved,
shivering, in a quilt
his mother saved scraps for
& sewed. Beside him
the bottle of blended empty
as a promise, as this house
half paid for. An hour later
power returns—bless the company
electric—our heater starting up
its argument with the fridge.
Will take far longer
till the stomach
in the freezer fills up & quits
growling, for men to resurrect
the phone lines, our talk
trapped outside in ice.
History
Pillar of my high school, Mr. W
made class by seven a.m., filling
his blackboards with white, using notes
decades old & denture yellow.
I heard he could write any way
you wanted—backward, forward,
left hand or right, even
mirrored. For him History
was what each night
he erased.
He never missed a day. Snow
days drove the man insane—
——
regular as mail, he said if a letter could reach
the school, so could we, trudging
through bitterest cold to his overwarm room.
Never let kids eat, or talk in class, or take
down just what he wrote on the board—
Listen to what I’m telling you, he’d say,
synthesize, don’t record. Some days he’d launch
into an anecdote about the War or
what’s wrong with kids today—
you’re not moral or immoral, just
amoral. Even his jokes grown older
than he was, the trap door he wished he owned
——
would send kids crashing into spikes
simply for walking during class
without a pass. At breaks he began to bend
to pick up stray trash. He despised the boom
boom boom of the radios black kids wore,
he swore, or tugged his eyes at the corners
to imitate a Chinaman on the rail.
Ah, so. Brilliant is what everyone
dubbed him, but by the time we got there
Mr. W had started to slip,
missing most of the May before—
rumors went round
——
our school had tried stopping
his return—Take the year off,
you earned it—even he
told us that—but here he was,
stonewalling, aged twenty years
over the summer, back like MacArthur
or the Terminator to teach us
all. Some seniors from last year’s class
brought him steel tension balls
that September—tinny things
he clutched in his palm & clanked past
each other like cymbals
——
tolling stress. We
stayed silent. Fifty pounds
shed over the summer, his wrists jutted out
from the frayed cuffs
of his Crayola cardigans.
He’d turn & tune
those chiming spheres like the globe
his classroom never had—
his walls held only Old Glory
& a fading photo of the flag
raised at Iwo Jima. Mr. W let us know
he never got to fight in the War
——
more often as the year wore
away with his sweater’s elbows,
till his yellow shirt shone
through like yolk. That year
the Depression & World
War took all winter
& knowing time was short, his own,
Mr. W spent nights transcribing
to transparencies words
water could wipe away,
numbering each palimpsest to match
his crumbling notes. Just in case,
——