Touch

--for Y.K. & brothers playing football in the parks, in the streets, in the dark

We made our own laws.
I want to be a Hawk,
A Dolphin, a Lion, we'd say

In stores where team logos hung
Like animal skins.

Even by moonlight,
We'd chase each other
Around the big field

Beneath branches sagging
As if their leaves were full of blood.

We didn't notice when policemen
Came lighting tree-bark
& our skin with flashlights.

They saw our game
For what it was:

Fingers clutching torso,
Shoulder, wrist--a brawl.
Some of the boys escaped,

Their brown legs cut by thorns
As they ran through the brush.

It's true, we could have been mistaken
For animals in the dark,
But of all possible crimes,

Blackness was the first.
So they tackled me,

And read me my rights without saying:
You Down or Dead Ball.
We had a language

They did not use, a name
For collision. We called it Touch.

Terrance Hayes is author of Muscular Music (1999) and the recipient of a Red Brick Review Award, a Whiting Writers Award, and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award for his poetry. He is an assistant professor of English at Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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