Poetry Archive

Head to Head II

(Duking it at the Millennium)

Stephen Bett

The caption beside the 'community' tab slash marketing
organ's front page photo-spread announces a Ruckus
Four snappy freeze-frame photos narrating a local street-
corner duke out       Twenty-something guy, stocky, lank
dark hair, swarthy, high cheek bones, beady eyes, worn
two-tone football jacket pushing a giant M (Michigan?)

jeans, mtn boots, peeling around from the driver's side,
car dead-stopped in intersection, to accost a pedestrian
he's evidently "bumped" on cross walk and who's just
hammered his fist along our driver's Main Machine

Second and third photos show "pedestrian," a full head
taller, older (late 50s?), looking v. much the grumpy /
sour-face / mean-mouth disciplinarian-type football
coach       Flings the dude guy, shoulder first, onto the
trunk of his surprisingly nondescript, white, four-
door sedan, cuffs him on the forehead

The last picture shows the now macho-compromised
"motorist" caught, head still a-swivel, somewhere
between offense and defense       Sidelong corner-eye
contact, finger pointing obtusely at "coach," driver's legs
stiffly apart, back on heels, splay-foot

It all reads like a magic marker play, four parter,
under gridiron colours two looming background
signs - red/white one flags photographer's own
low-brow rag behind red/blue Sally Ann,
likewise full block coverage, even odd
ideologues, for our info-tainment

Plus one does notice, creditably, the closing shot
black and white - a sequence played to the socio-
sporting annals       Two "combatants" like split-
ends left out at the millennial
line of scrimmage

 

 

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