All American
Friday night lights
Fire licked up my neck, lit by the cheers of a hundred throats. Thin framed, charging down the field like pads hung on a pole, I ran with the football under my right arm. Growing wings suddenly, the inflated pigskin fled to the caress of another. And I, lay deflated under a farm boy linebacker watching it race away as the cheers choked my ears. Pulling me by the mask to stand, my coach’s red face hushed the drone of the crowd, his hot breath both serious and sneer, “Never forget what shame sounds like”. _written February 17 2026
I wrote this poem as a prompt during Alex Dawson’s spectacular poetry writing workshop. She prompted us to write something based on a childhood memory. This poem is a bit fictionalized as the coach did not actually pull me up by my face mask, though the ending line is pretty close to what he told me (or at least how I heard it).
Fortunately, I was so spectacularly terrible at sports that I quit after that one season and found my way to choir and theater the next year. There in the care of a choir director and drama teacher who were perfect coaches, I found beautiful forms of self expression and collaborative creativity that I thrived in. I wonder how many people (especially men) are walking around with their coach’s toxic words still whispering in their ears?
Words from teachers, coaches, pastors, parents, they have so much power and influence -- more than I think they realize when spoken. They shape us in so many ways. I still remember the words of a mentor who said he was "always right". Not only have I learned to avoid people like that ever since, but it's also made me conscious of my own pride and arrogance -- and determination to never be like that.
Thank goodness for choir and theater! What a refuge and tribe for me during the wobbly and wonky high school years. I can only imagine the cuts made by coaches to boys. The one remark from my homeroom teacher, who was also my Spanish teacher that stung, and was humiliating, is seared into my memory. The kids were talking about a tv show that ran the night before about the Holocaust. I think it was opposite a James Bond movie, and some other popular show. We had 3 television channels, as this was the 1970s in America. The teacher said, “if Hitler had done what he tried to do then, we wouldn’t have all the problems we have now.” I was stunned. I looked around the room, noticed I was the only Jewish person there, collected my books, and walked straight to the headmaster’s office to report that bastard.