Brown Page 3

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,

  ——