JOE BETZ

Learning to Curse


If not for hopscotch 

I might still be lost

in the parceled woods

of southern Indiana,

but the blacktop called

like cardinals flushed

from elderberry bushes,

that yip of dangerous

surprise, when your

own one-legged 

flight was enough

to convince you 

that gravity was broken here,

apples fixed, sickening green,

in the trees half-shading

the basketball court, forever.

And today I think of them

bunched in knots, imagine 

my arms, long enough now

to cuff the lowest limbs

and test stems that remain,

even in dreams, invisible,

and the memory of boys

older than me with wrists

thick as my neck, punching 

the basketball into a confusion

of leaves to break our story,

until giving up, done,

they said, with our bullshit. 
 
 
 
128 The Paris-American

Joe Betz is an English instructor at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, IN.  He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2010.  Recent poems appear in Anti-, Portland Review, and Natural Bridge.  He hopes you liked his poem. His wife chose this picture.

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   Next week's poet:

 K. A. Hays