Schoolyard Blues

by Howard Good

They were shouting, Kill him, kill him.
My shirt was torn,
I could feel my eye swelling.
He faked with his right
and smiled when I flinched,
then he charged,
and I flung my fist out,
and the stone in the ring
I'd just gotten for my 13th birthday
sliced open his bottom lip,
an ecstatic gush of blood,
and the fight was over.
We used to call them hoods,
taps on the heels of their shitkickers,
hair Brylcreamed into whorls and curlicues,
but, really, all of us were the same,
beautiful and raw
and pointed like guns toward the future.