you want their
eyes on the ball, always on the ball, you want them playing
ball; so you get small and quiet walking by, you don’t let
nothing rattle or shake, you just blend, into the sidewalk, into
the air, get gray like the fence, it’s wire, shaky, partly walling
the place in, you walk quiet and soft and hope your heart don’t
beat too loud; and there’s a parking lot for cops right next to
the basketball, not the official vehicles but the cars they come
to work in, the banged up C hevys and Fords they drive in
from the suburbs because most o f them don’t live here no
more but still, even though they got more money than they
make you don’t see nothing smart and sleek, there’s just this
old metal, bulky, heavy, discolored. The young cops are tight
and you don’t want to see them spring loose, their muscles are
all screwed together real tight and their lips are tight, sewed
tight, and they stand straight and tight and they look ahead,
not around, their pupils are tight in the dead center o f their
eyes staring straight ahead; and the older ones wear cheap
sports jackets too big for them, gray, brown, sort o f plaid,
nearly tweed, wrinkled, and their shoulders sag, and they are
morose men, and their cars can barely hold them, their legs fall
out loose and disorganized and then they move their bodies
around to be in the same direction as the legs that fell down,
they m ove the trunks o f their bodies from behind the steering
wheels against gravity and disregarding common sense and
the air moves out o f the way, sluggish and slow, displaced by
their hanging bellies, and they are tired men, and they see
everything, they have eyes that circle the globe, insect eyes
and third eyes, they see in front and behind and on each side,
their eyes spin without m oving, and they see you no matter
how blank and quiet you are, they see you sneaking by, and
they wonder w hy you are sneaking and what you have to hide,
they note that you are trash, they have the view that anything
female on this street is a piece o f gash, an open wound inviting
you in for a few pennies, and that you especially who are
walking by them now have committed innumerable evils for
which you must pay and you want to argue except for the fact
that they are not far from wrong, it is not an argument you can
win, and that makes you angrier against them and fearful, and
you try to disappear but they see you, they always see you; and
you learn not to think they are fools; they will get around to
you; today, tom orrow, someday soon; and they see the boys
playing basketball and they want to smash them, smash their
fucking heads in, but they’re too old to smash them and they
can’t use their guns, not yet, not now; even the young cops
couldn’t smash them fair, they’re too rigid, too slow up
against the driving rage o f the boys with the ball; so you see
them noting it, noting that they got a grudge, and the cars are
