Kristan clogged to Rocky Top
at her wedding, didn’t want
her baby born a Yankee so took
a slow train south in the dusk
of her ninth month: Virginia
born in the squalling drawl
of Mama.

I left my accent in a gas station
in Kansas on the move out west.
Too much time spent
in front of audiences beaming back
sympathy for the slow wittedness
implicit in my speech:

I didn’t catch what she was saying,
but didn’t her words taste sweet?

Now it only ever comes out
when I’m back home, or drunk,
or just plain mad. Better watch
the combination of all three:
the knock-kneed grit rairin’ up
skunk drunk, palms fisted
for the rain of blows to come.

Growing up, I knew more about football
than ballet or Barbie dolls, pigskin
in the South second only to God,
and only then on the Sabbath day.

I’d edge into pickup games with the boys
and they’d take me in—y’all get the girl—
but made me run wide, sweeping hooks

that kept me clear out of the way
til the day Jackson wrenched his rotator cuff
and they let me try quarterback.

I spread my fingers through the laces
the way my dad had taught me to
and sent it spiraling clean and long
into Kenneth’s outstretched arms.

From then on, I was all-time
boy: fists full of hair, sunken teeth,
fractured bones, their brawling bodies

dogpiling me down
and always a quick, anonymous squeeze
where one day my breasts would be.