Famous Negro Athletes

Adrian Matejka

        after Jean-Michel Basquiat 

We are all famous Sunday mornings at the Y. 

 That magnificent & rattled-rim space of big·timing 

 Sundays. Gym bag hung over the shoulder 

of a matching sweatshirt Sundays. Touch one toe 

 then the other if you can kind of days. Ball shoes 

 crisp in the bag & What up, team? we say. 

For real, on Sundays, we're sweating in quintuplicate 

 like a grinning team portrait. Knees swollen as roundly 

 as the composite basketball we play with. & sometimes, 

the shoe-string glance from the trainer up front, the 

 straight up & down of would-be ballers orbiting the ball 

 court like paparazzi & handshake laughs at bad passes 

have to be adequate when your jumper is so far off 

 somebody should staple flyers to telephone poles for it.