Fifty-Fifty Ball
       

Yesterday, I was cruising along, behind the wheel,
listening to that song "Age of Consent" by New Order,
and I swear-twenty-five years of my life just up and flew
out the window, like a hot dog wrapper. Whole chunks of me
are breaking off. The referee blows the halftime whistle.
Coach yells, locker room, so I take off my shin guards,
go in, but there's no one there, just me
and all these empty lockers filled with the bones of kids
I went to grade school with. Coach yells, back on the field.
Suck it up. Be a man, but I just feel like wearing lipstick
and writing the words god's slut on my forehead. Why
is life this itchy pair of socks I yearn to remove each night,
so I can run around naked in someone else's skin?

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Copyright © 2013 Jeffrey McDaniel All rights reserved
from Chapel of Inadvertent Joy
University of Pittsburgh Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission