☀ Today's Poem: "The Boys of Cass and Pacific" Luke Johnson

February 7, 2025

The Boys of Cass and Pacific

Luke Johnson

—For Harmon

We lobbed a ball above a rim we could not reach.
Reached as though our feet

could find a rhythm right
with summer haze and black top, bodies
yet to stretch. Afternoons,

our daddies smoldered pipes on porches
playing cards, and stacked unemployment checks.

We dared not interrupt their count.
Dared not take a moment's glance
from men who mangled skin with brass

and bragged on corners filled with swagger,
swooping low to sweet ladies.

The things we did when no one watched
was worrisome: acid, shrooms, pop of bottles, bongs,
girls in jean skirts swaying hips

like nets in violet rain.
We learned to pass how to dribble how

to leap despite our average lift
and lilt like something holy wholly terrified,
shot clock clicking away. Years later, when the city

cleared the court we knew as boys
and the school no longer draped our names

our trophy trapped in glass, I watched an old friend
weave through traffic, stutter my name with surprise.

On his cheek a mark, one eye gone,

a limp and struggle for air.
He asked for a hit. Asked

if I'd ever been in love.
Wondered about my life my sons
if I'd lost or been slowly losing.

By which he meant light,
the lightness of air: the lob and lift and score.

The swelling crowd.
The flicker first before the bell
blaring into the night.

from the book QUIVER / Texas Review Press

READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM

I lost touch with my best friend from high school, like many relationships do, post-graduation. Years later at a fourth of July barbeque, I ran into him. He was an empty shell of himself. He’d spent 5 years in Iraq as a sniper and laughed about the lives he’d taken. This poem blossomed from a desire to go back in time. A time when he and I (and so many others) were innocent young men, navigating the world.

Luke Johnson on "The Boys of Cass and Pacific"

Eduardo Martínez-Leyva on His Debut, Cowboy Park

"I was trying to explain how the poems depict a family or community that has endured different types of oppression. I would like folks to see these figures that have been impacted in some way by societal structures. But nevertheless, there’s still heart, there’s beauty, and there’s strength there, despite those flaws. And I think that’s also my way of giving myself permission to depict the flaws in order to also show a little bit of their resilience."

via LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES

Color cover image of Carol Moldaw's new book, Go Figure

What Sparks Poetry: Carol Moldaw on Drafts

"In many ways, this draft marks the end of my blind groping and the beginning of the poem proper. Nothing I’d written up to that point had caught my poetic interest linguistically; my thoughts, preoccupations, and perceptions had been floating around without substance or anchor. In this draft though, images began to coalesce, and the lines develop a distinctive voice—the poem’s voice."

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