From the Fishouse

This sorry mulatto of homemade leather
and rubber now named a “basketball”
hyperventilates from concrete to palm

like a little kid, bitched out on time out.
The bounce bounces according to pressure
and rotation, but this isn’t basketball.

Even with punks who jump high enough
to disrespect physics. Even with Jams
revisited as athletic shorts. Basketball

as I remember it had defensive stance,
two hands on the rock, jumper elbows
at angles like nose caricatures. Socks

pulled up and short shorts. Maybe
that’s why rust makes my hands hurt,
busts jumpers and lungs. Basketball theories

and stamina are left in the Gus Macker
we almost won. No ‘I’ in team phonetics
left on the outside courts at Ben Davis

High School, where dudes who talked
that When I balled in school got Statue
of Libertied by Terrence Stansbury

or shook by Vern Fleming’s behind
the back dribble. That’s basketball, as pure
as Dr. J saving Pittsburgh. Or Jim Chitwood

hitting the game winner even though he didn’t
make Cathedral’s varsity team outside
of Hollywood. He couldn’t make the same

team we beat like Rock’em Sock’em. That
was before I was rubbing my half-moon gut
under a half-moon backboard in the parking

lot of this elementary school. Back before
touching one toe, then the other needed
an outline. Basketball works like carbon dating

on spine and handles. Not love handles—hands
trying to work the dribble with something missing.
The same way a bad comic works the funny.