poets play basketball with words

April 2, 2018 in poetry

Elizabeth Acevedo holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion as well as a Cave Canem Fellow, CantoMundo Fellow, and participant of the Callaloo Writer’s Workshop. She is the author of two poetry collections: her first full-length collection and winner of the 2016 Berkshire Prize, Medusa Reads La Negra’s Palm (Tupelo Press, forthcoming) and her chapbook, Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths (Yes Yes Books, 2016). She is scheduled to be a featured speaker at Life is a Verb Camp 2019.

Chest Pass

-Liz Acevedo

Tyrone and I had a one-on-one basketball challenge.
Our summer tournaments lasting
until our puffed up Northfaces
got in the way of our handle.

Don’t let them fool you—
I thought wisdom could be chest passed—
learn to read more than the Braille on this ball,
Its skin is not the only place dreams are allowed to live.

We dribbled beneath the spray-painted
R.I.P portrait of his father.
He swore, Me? I’ma be a baller. Play for Syracuse.
I was always up a game. When did we stop?

Returned from school to find he wouldn’t look me
in the face. He’d organized the junkies.
Trained them to lineup single-filed,
half-glimmer mannequins,

cued to step forward, wait, head nod,
and a dap later the line one less.
When the new boys who didn’t know me
wolf whistled, reached for my wrist, Tyrone was quick

to lay fist on their chest, push them back,
Yo, don’t fuck with her. Go ahead, Liz.
With wind-chilled face I leaned out of my mother’s window,
avoid looking at the stoop when he called up, You still play, Liz?

Neither of us do, Tyrone, we grown now, right
Tyrone? Benched our childhood in the Little Park, Tyrone?
You giftwrapped yourself around the block
and I forgot how to walk this neighborhood without being afraid

of making eye contact. The group we grew up
with looks at me like I own a name they don’t know.
Like my walk don’t belong on this concrete, Tyrone.
But just because they repaved the stoop

doesn’t mean my ass don’t remember it, Tyrone.
Tyrone, how’s your post move? Do you still
have your sweet spot from the corner?

About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is an author, speaker, and educator who builds learning communities and gets to the heart of difficult topics. Her work over the last three decades has focused on diversity, inclusion, social justice, and living and working mindfully. She has developed diversity strategies and educational programming for major nonprofit and corporate organizations and has been a featured speaker at many national and international conferences.