by trey dunham

Did I myself not choose you, the twelve,
And yet one of you is a devil?

John 6:70

Luke Mickelson picked me
For some reason
Maybe I was small, a runt
My bones weak and brittle
Teeth a little big and yellow
In the front of my mouth
The guard barely covering them
Exposed

Maybe he could smell
The sweat puddling in my socks
Or the way the wind left my body
Like air squeezed out of the vinyl
Seats in his 89 Camero
His muscular rump like a sledge
Hammer against the foam-soft
Interior, foot hammering the gas
Running us over
In the lot black streaks left on asphalt
On our minds

Maybe it was because he knew
We used to chant
Quietly under our breath
“LUUUUUKE at the MOOOOON”
Behind his back
Alluding to his pie face
And the suggestion his head was full of cheese
Cold hard lifeless hunk of gouda
Or Muenster you could smell as he
Wafted past
A lifeless head
On its way to sleep through
One more class

Maybe I reminded him
Of himself freshman year
Bobble-head barely able to hold
The helmet
Hip pads with nothing
To hold on to, no grip to speak of
And Glade Schaeffer bearing down on him
Like a sudden storm
Ripping across those late November
Wyoming plains
He saw it coming
And that was his mistake

There was no where to go
So he just closed his eyes
And braced for impact

It hurts worse when you see it coming
The pain rushes out ahead
Like wind before that heavy wall
Of rain it somehow hardens us
A harbinger of things to come
We always think the worst
And everybody knows that is
When you really get hurt
When sinews and muscle and bone
Are taught pulled tight
Against the blow, resisting

?

In Nepal the night busses run
From six until six
Often the only road there
Is a dry river bed strewn
With rocks that used to be eddies
And holes that used to be
Quiet pools but now hammer
Us who are trying to sleep
Trying to make it through the night

I watch those
Who have done it before
There bodies slack
Tossed and giving in
To the blows of the bus bounding
Through these waters
And I discover as I loosen
The hold I have on my body, my life
Sleep comes

?

And so I open myself to the hit
Close my eyes, let it all hang loose
Feet soft on the end line, my cleats
Hardly holding on to the grass
My shoulders and elbows dangle
At the end of a string the weight
Of hands that have given up
Slack, palms open to the sky
My knees lubricated and balancing
Between buckle and attention
Feeling neither
My head dances like an angel
On the head of a pin
I can see it coming

And I don’t
Hear the roar of the team
Or feel the hair on their arms standing up
Knowing what I do not
I do not smell the turf, the grass
Exploding under each coming step
I do not hear the venom
The poison of past pain and loss
Carried on his frame
Or taste the memory of a full moon
A love that betrayed him
Dealing him a blow that took
The wind out of him
Out of the clear blue sky
He did not see it coming

I do not feel the weight of the earth
I am leaving my body slack
And I am surprised at the passing
Of time
How the trajectory of my life
Remains the same
Without anomaly
Without explanation
Without expectation
Trying not to flinch