3rd string NFL players name parks after themselves.
Chocolate straws stir decaf coffee & I left
my keys in a cab, slid from my slick suit silk-lined
pocket, so I knocked down the door with Oxford wingtips
& my shoulder. In Englewood, years ago, a mother
& step son shared a foam finger at the Sox game,
drank too much, fought hard over pizza toppings
& which one left the lights on. When sirens flared
into the drive, she was white with blood loss, the finger
she chopped off wrapped in a napkin in her purse
to make a point. The boy would go on to star
in a semi-pro rugby league for two years, before losing
the use of his knee to a broken bottle he fell on,
tripping drunk from the bus. They live
below me now, moving up in the world.
He limps, she points with her thumb
at the door loose on its shattered hinge, shares that story —
how standing barefoot in the lawn, wide-eyed, she waited
for the paramedics with a smile because the neighbors were
baking banana bread, she could smell it, and grass
clippings clung to her ankles and the cleaver, she said,
for all that was lost, was clean. She took a deep breath
of Parliament & said that it sure ain’t like the movies,
knives coated red, there’s only a little streak, if anything.