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.