Perfect Spiral

Always, at whoever’s house, teeth marks:
a chunk chewed from the stitches 
or the side, the smooth N or F 
we would worry with our fingers
before testing our strength against
fall’s yawning acreage, a Hail Mary
every down. Sometimes waterlogged
from a rain barrel or above-ground pool,
often scrawled with permanent marker
across the seam (nickname, lightning).

Never did we learn what it stood for:
Non-Expanding Recreational Foam, 
though it had our love and was on our tongues 
when the company expanded to bows 
and dart guns. Enlist, engage, enforce
went one ad, and those of us who didn’t 
make the team knew the assignment,
learned we could still launch missiles 
with our arms, could even take bites
out of the bullets with no harm done.

MICHAEL METIVIER is a writer, musician, and editor living in Vermont. His work has appeared in journals including Poetry, Words and Sports Quarterly, Washington Square, and African American Review, and is forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, Green Mountains Review, Moist, and Northern Woodlands, among others.