Rinky Dink

In his country, hockey players never fought.
It was in his gait, the upright stride that made him
taller than his teammates bent fist first over
their work at this patchy puddle jump, this
hose-flooded slick chute muted by speckled light.
Back when America was faded-jean beauty. Majestic loud.
Back when we were world’s forest and former factory,
and we smelled like dirt and pine needles. Aspiration
and gasoline. Chewed-down lipstick and French fries.
We never learned to say his name right.
He never grew tall enough to be a statue.
Yet blade to blue block to goal fest, it was glory
enough in a podium-stand collection of intramural medals.
Then the season ended. He couldn’t pack the trophies,
take the girlfriend who never learned his words
or prove the legends he knew to be true.
Now his hands itched to blunt and beat,
to make blood drip from the broken noses of fat
American boys and watch it bounce on ratty,
pock-marked ice that reeked of March.

JESSICA GREGG’s work has appeared in Broadkill Review, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Yellow Arrow Journal, and San Fedele Press's Art in the Time of Covid. She has forthcoming poems in Global Poemic and Canary's Summer Solstice Issue.