Sneakerheads
Chris Joyner
Sports Poetry & Prose Contest 2012 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Poetry
In my fifth grade universe,
you needed only three things
to survive: yo mama jokes,
a jump shot, and decent kicks.
Rich Jamal had those beautiful black
and red patent leather Jordan's,
trim shimmering like puddles
of night with each liquid step
though the halls. Lanky Preston
had the Penny's; Chris B.,
dubbed Crispy for his dark
complexion, the carbon fiber Kidd's,
and I wanted to be just like them,
like Mike. So I halfway resented
when teammates told me,
"The coach's son is always
a shooter." We knew to shoot
against the wind, which way the ball
would bound off rusted rims stiff
as our fathers' backs; knew it didn't
matter if your clothes were bummy
as long as you wore the right
kicks; knew our parents had to pull
extra shifts, layaway, scrape
to afford our sacred sneakers
but no one mentioned. Just
moonwalks and crossovers
on the day of our unveiling.
Then graduation unfurled humid
into every corner of summer.
Jamal's pops got stationed
in California. Preston was either serving
time in summer school or grounded
for stealing. I avoided going skins,
kept my freckled secret, and dribbled
fingertips raw. In one game,
got stuck guarding my next door
neighbor's dad—sweat catching
in his crow's feet, bronzed from a lifetime
of construction. Slime-backed old man
played with a chip, went hard
in the paint, so I clipped his drive
with my knee, and he toppled to the spray
painted gravel. It was a small opening
above his forehead that blossomed:
quartz in the rock, white laces
stained red. From then
years amassed like forgotten
free throws, tasseled caps tossed
into the air. I returned like a ghost
to the park across the street
from distant echoes of, Yo mama
so fat, when she fell
in love, she broke it.
New friends, new kicks. We got
picked up and ran full, got cocky,
ran up the score when I thought
I recognized Crispy down low—
filled out, scraggly stash, eyes
plumbed deeper in his skull,
but still Crispy—until I crossed
between the legs, lunged for a layup,
and felt his hands like bitter wings
fast at my back, hurling me
chest-first into the unforgiving
post, an embrace that shifts
the spine, and the post trembled
awhile, and I walked it off.
