Low Boy

At a football field tucked between a landfill and a strip mall,
students take to the gridiron at halftime to rally for love on earth,
and everywhere else. Grassed cheerleader knees erect skin pyramids

as two freshmen in the stands rub thighs without eye contact.
The clothed ass meat of spectators bulges through the wooden slat gaps.
Under the bleachers, kids are smoking brisket, and also other things —  
they chant slow beneath a paint-chipped fat ceiling

like a Midwest Sistine Chapel. A kid with a megaphone screams
“More,” says football is the only ethical means of embracing one another,
and sometimes you have to bend the ones you love just a little
to see if they snap. The coaches cuddle and swap childhood secrets.

A boy kisses his mother and hands her a helmet. She runs
five-second 40s until she exits through the tunnel, she pukes
in the dumpster of a neighboring artisanal furniture store.
Family owned, losing to those big box slot jockeys, all quantity,

no craft. The owner worries his daughter didn’t inherit the filial devotion
to leather care and warranties, and what could she learn at some college
that she couldn’t from her old man? Now who will eat his spare pickle
thrown in with the hoagie by the corner deli good woman every lunchtime?

Will she find a good man out there? Will she have grandkids, will they visit
and chase each other through dining set legs? The young oil of their fingers
stripping the varnish on the lowboys. Their sloppy mouths sucking
on corners and cushions, climbing soft castles of their own creation.

The secret is a sturdy foundation, then more risk the higher you go.