Rebecca Lobo's Eyes
I looked
into Rebecca Lobo’s eyes once.
If I
stretch an inch we are just the same height.
So when I
glanced up outside the Affinia Hotel
As she
stood between two teammates
I got a
decent look at her.
She has
steely eyes, variable,
Impatient
I was standing
Between
her and Madison Square Garden.
I look at
her with a poet’s gaze,
Bred from
thousands of years
Of the
liberties of bards.
Rebecca
Lobo has champion eyes,
Fierce as
the finishing move to the basket.
Mine
don’t miss much either, especially close up.
I watch
the tall women move in the Elite Eight,
Brackets
of women with an affinity for the rim.
Rebecca
is done playing for the Liberty.
She says
her children now stretch her towards infinity.
She
towers over the coaches, asking the questions,
Her
pursed lips just visible in the picture.
The
producers tell her to smile for the camera.
Tell a
hawk to smile. She tries, but she can’t.
_____________________________________________
The Tall Women’s Dance
The tall women twist and twine and turn
The bonds that hold the world in place.
They are getting ready to lift and fly.
There are laws of the universe
That no longer will apply.
The crowd catches on. It’s an invitation
To rise and land in another space
Unthought of in the world’s rotation.
The mascot dances with a little girl.
He dances to Rocky, with oversized
gloves.
He bangs a drum. He dances to a tune
That everybody loves.
The tall women are deep oceans
That never have been frozen.
They are watched by women and girls
Who already know the lesson.
They clap their hands, rejoicing.
My pen races over the ticket
So fast I can barely read it.
The basketballs are particles
Bouncing for each horizon:
Neutron, proton, electron.
Dancers zoom in by the dozens,
An acrobat team of weightless teens.
Old women, too, and tiny girls
And everything in between.
The ribbons in the arena flash,
Tail lights of a starship.
Gravity loses all its traction.
What holds us together
Is only human attraction.
Every one who can
Dances to the Jump Cam.
The tall women flit around like birds.
There are no wires, no walls, no
remarks.
They are beyond words, past time.
There is only liberty, and sparks,
And two small girls with basketballs
Singing “We Are Family.”
This isn’t a game they’re playing.
It’s the ownership of being.
_____________________________________________
Brittney Griner is Beautiful
Oh, I disliked Brittney
Griner.
Bully girl, jockoid, dead
stare.
No poetry. Coasting on her
inheritance
Of six feet eight and sharp
elbows.
I changed my mind though
When they drafted her first.
She wore a giant white suit,
like George Harrison
Or a dude owning his wedding
day.
The tears poured down her
cheeks
And she didn’t bother
To blot them back. How wrong
I was! Brittney Griner is
beautiful.
There’s a frictionless world
for everyone,
And Brittney Griner was finally
seeing hers.
She grew up a giant, a freak,
Kids calling her gay before she
even knew.
She hooped for a school
That hated the way she was
But would look the other way
As long as the buckets fell.
Brittney grew tall enough, at
last
To see her way over the
bullshit.
I like how Brittney Griner
unfolds
Like a calendar of the
mountains,
How no couch she sits on fits
her,
But she convinces them they
do.
That's poetry.
I like her untangled braids
And her angled cat head.
Her skin is beautiful. The ink
is vivid and tender.
She lopes like a jaguar coming
home for the day.
I would walk her down the
aisle
On her wedding day, beautiful
girl.
When I see over the shit,
some day,
I will go first in the
lottery.
______________________________________
Mark Fogarty is managing editor of The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow and emcees the Red Wheelbarrow Poets’
monthly reading series at GainVille Café, Rutherford, NJ. His poetry has been
published in Hawaii Review, Viet Nam Generation, Journal of NJ Poets, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Exit 13, Unrorean, Eclectic Literary Forum, Cokefishing in Alpha Beat Soup, TEA Newsletter, Footwork, Artemis, Bohemia, City Lit
Rag, Instigatorzine, Spirits, Inspire the Planet, Passaic Review, Pink Moon, Side
Effects, Lyndhurst Literary Magazine and
The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow. Work
is forthcoming in Exit 13,
Paterson Literary Review and Red Paint Hill. He is the
author of three collections of poetry: Myshkin’s
Blues, Peninsula, and Phantom Engineer.
