Hoops

Trees fall so I can play
ground with my ink.

—De La Soul

I.

By a falling, Cyclone chain
-link fence, a black rush streaks
for netted hoops, & one alone
from a distance breaks

above the undulant pack, soars—
more a Sunday Skywalk,
he cups the ball, whirling his arm,
swoops down a Tomahawk.

"Radar! Don't fly without me!"
It's Big Earl who coughs then downs
his bottle, a 40 oz. of Olde E.
Laughter makes its rounds.

I cross a footpath of a city-block,
a short rut that snakes between
a lush epitaph of dandelions
& weed-brush behind Happy

Hollow Courts; the ghost
of a staircase echoes here: sign
of lives lived, of souls lost.
Faded hues of graffiti lines

bombed on a wall, Phase
says Don't stop the body rock.
At gate's entrance, my gaze
follows Radar & his half-cocked

jump-shot. All morning I sang
hymns yet weighed his form:
his flashing the lane, quick
-stop to become sky-born.

Elbows posed like handlebars,
he flicks a wrist, the pill arcs
through sunlight glare
& splashes the basket's

circle of air. A boom-box bobs
& breaks beats on a buckling sea
of asphalt;— the hard,
driving rhymes of bdp,

rousing that rowdy crowd
of hustlers tossing craps, waging
fists & dollar bets, only louder—
& one more enraged

promises to pistol-whip
the punk who doesn't pay.
He doubles up, blows a kiss;
each dealer counts his days.

I turn from these highlights—
Spaldings missile like meteors.
Radar dribbles near. "You're late."
Before I speak a word,

"My boy, shootin' geometry!"
We laugh. Father Dave, coach
at St. Charles, once let me
play as a walk-on in hopes

I would tutor Radar. Not even
Pythagoras could awaken
in his head the elegance
of a triangle's circumference.

Four years later, he's off
on scholarship to unc.
I'm to study Nabokov
at state's university.

Proof of Pop-pop's maxim,
"There's more ways to skin . . ."
If the slum's our dungeon,
school's our Bethlehem.

Yet what connects those dots
that rattle hustlers's palms
with Radar's stutter-step
& my pen's panopticon?

It casts shadows dark
as tar as we begin
our full-court run. A brick
off the half-moon's side

—in waves, we sprint.
No set offence: his pass,
my bounce, his deft
lateral, two-hand jam.

II.

Stark Sunday afternoon light,
unending solo of sky,
a parade of leaps
& weaves fortifying

our store of groans, each
glistening muscle surging towards
the body's curative peaks,—
nimble, sprung, absorbed

in our picks, touch, & rolls,
we swerve across haloed
turf whose ceremony overruns
suffering, an arpeggio

of chucks, split-second lobs
past a squad of sweat-backed
ghosts,— pass, glide,
post, pivot away, look

then dish: follow through,—
Swish! Radar back-pedals
as the net-strings flap & swing to
rest. The blacktop ripples,

raising its curtain of steam;
five ballers grudgingly exit
& make for the next team.
Top of the key, hand on hip,

I point for art sake, for jest
a finger,— challenge
Radar in a dunking contest.
Just then a car engine

revs Oxford Ave., stalls & peels
out: panther-like Camarro
whose chrome wheels
screech to a stop. Its smoke-

tinted window drops diplomatic
-ally. A frenzied rustling
rises like shrieks fumbling
inside a scream, & the rusted

base of pole where life
snakes an open cut
up to center-court, there lay
Radar enfolding his heart.

III.

The ceiling in my room
a projector's canvas, the moon
a flurried cone of light
to which I recite Brooks,

Frost, Hughes. Lying back
in my mind, each book's
a slide held up like a snap
-shot, giant stills illumined

by that Cyclop's eye.
Below bunk my cousin
stacks tens, twenties,—
pacing corners till twelve,

he & the Ooh-mob Gang
slinging plastic vials
of crack, the cursed slang
of death: "I'm gonna buy

a Gucci watch, Air...