Kalamazoo
by Michael Marberry
Tonight, how can I capture my dysthymia without you?
Tonight, should I feel liable to blame: for turning old
And being poor at work in trades where I don’t matter?
When did my life outlast its chapter, glorious fucknut?
How can the moon (tonight, it’s super!), which I swore
For all to banish as a symbol, to strike from every poem
Paint the sky in perfect kairos like a mirrored aperture?
What smarts the road each night in Southwest Michigan
To move toward economic sorrow: onward, downward
Like a telescopic ladder? Those nights, which industries
Abandoned you, Kzoo: land of boiling waters, trickiest
Rivers? Which folks absconded to Ohio, equally shitty?
(Where comes my deep embarrassment, the suspicion
Of a glance or smell, in public: man without children?)
When did my body start to mourn its mediocre penis:
Fatten, gray, ache, blur, and bleed from tragic origins?
Why’s my shame seem never-vanish (though it hides
Like a regional accent or like another fucking adjunct
In the crowd) and, as a feeling absent corresponding
Logic, suddenly emergent like a scar in a face of a tree?
Admiral Abecedarian
—David Robinson (1989-2003)
Admiral. AKA all-star. AKA all-time, all-(ever and always)-American
Center. See my credentials: Champion—check that! correction–
Two-time champ. Ten-time West representative. Texas twin tower.
Wooden-award winner waging low-post war, recording rows of W
Rookie-of-the-year. Rodman’s more respectable rebound partner.
Midshipman, Mathematician. Marketing darling. Most valuable
Player. Prominent philanthropist. Popovich’s prized athletic pupil
Keeping the key clean, killing with my two-handed tomahawk.
Host to the NBA’s hottest household names on Mr. Robinson’s
(Nike-sponsored) Neighborhood. Naismith nominee, then inductee.
First pick. Physical phenom. Fourteen-year career. One of four
Quadruple-doubles in four quarters. One of fifty (quote-unquote)
Greatest players. A gentleman giant and go-getter. OG gold medalist
Dream-Teamer. Defensive paradigm. Vertical dynamite. Duncan’s
Seven-foot senior-assistant superstar. Scoring savant. San Antonio Spur
Icon. But I’m still insecure in this image, being ill-fitted, inferior. Isn’t it
Easy, after all, for the ego to erase away my errors, my early exits
(Losses all too legion and dismal to fully list at length here) and
B-ball battle scars (the bruises, the bad back, the broken bones)?
Unless with some understanding we pause to unearth the ugly truth,
Very little of value survives a violent reminiscence. View, (re)view,
Or else those obvious holes in an otherwise too orderly origin only
X the map of exaggeration, the extent to which the inexact exacerbates
Your yearning: a youth lost, yes, but never yours (not really yours). And yet,
Junior-lieutenant (not a genuine admiral), my jersey still reads a jumbo five-
Zero.
