You say it’s the heat, the sunglasses that puddle
from noses, glint in rows like sunfish, a flip-drip
school drying in hot air, but they’re going for it
on fourth down so you drop your jaw like you mean
to swallow a helmet whole, a groan to drown
the signal caller, the veins in your neck slung
with wind, with blood, stuck under a sweat-logged
tangle of crimson and the sound still pumping
out of your mouth like a whale’s stale exhale
and after the linemen launch their face-mask crunch
I see you stretched across the field like a sail,
riding the thin wire of the TV cameras up
to the empty corners of the upper deck, licking salt
from the freckled ears of wrecked boys, clipping letters
from their chests and giving their dates high fives
that shake their sunburnt cleavage because the D-line
held like leather, and now we’re in the red zone
so you zip-line down to the head cheerleader,
his brawny arms waiting for your boot poised
in his hand while you kick the other foot
to your forehead and flash the club-level seats,
a downpour of whiskey and water on the toddlers,
and I can tell we’re about to send a short pass out
to the flat, thumbs of our slight new slot receiver
meet at the seam on the underside of the ball
before you tuck it and break for the end zone
no touchdown celebration raucous as the spangle
you throw while they slap your shoulder pads,
a somersault shimmy that has the referee sprinting
down the sideline to clutch a sliver of your jersey,
empty and crumpled in the painted letters because
you’re already traipsing out the tunnel with a fistful
of championship rings, the running back’s diamond
gleaming in your nose, you stop by the trophy case
to lop some gold plate and help yourself to spiced
rum from the liquor lockers, a perfect spiral,
an orange scorch, electricity and shattered glass
of every blinking bulb the scoreboard has.