Brown Read online

  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