Minor superheroes with no villains

                                              by Adrian Matejka

So Far to Go

              -- after St. Joe Louis Surrounded by Snakes (1982)

              Jean-Michel Basquiat

In the purplish clutch between evening & more

evening, boys smoked cigarettes down to their minty

ends & talked about ass like mad hams & hips

like pow, mouths curling with avid adornment & vivid

hands shaping the air – palms down to palms up

in half circles of perplexity. The C shape the tobacco

still glowing between fingers makes is the closest

any one of these boys will get to a girl's hip today.

Which is why these boys, in thin tanks & hopeless

shirts, cut conversations easily from Watch how I get

at her to Knuckle up, fool, throwing shoulders & fists

at each other like minor superheroes with no villains

to fight. No capes in bare knuckles. No saving the block

either because every swing breaks something.

Outta Here Blacks

As soon as mom married Pops: off

to the suburbs, realm of glamorously-

blue swimming pools & outdoor

recess every warm day. Carpools

& a spinning rack full of comic books

out front at the Village Party.

No doubt: we were out of Carriage

House like kids when the sub turns

his back. We were out like juice boxes

squeezed out during lunch. We were

nowhere near our old neighborhood

like a well-organized protest.

No moving truck coming out because

we didn't have anything to move out.

We were so out of there I had to dial

long distance to tell Garrett we moved

out. We were outside our chalk-outlined

piece of town like a bad pitch. We

outlied that old spot like perfectly-

spelled gentrifications. We were

as out of bounds as the how & why

of black kids with two white parents.

Desegregation out here. I got some

ice cream out here like a weak Eddie

Murphy impersonation at the water-

cooler. We were as far out & off-

color as a black joke in our well-
festooned, nearly new neighborhood.

From The American Poetry Review, March/April 2016.