The 1980s Said

Praise Coach Mullins’ football fists

while you try on manhood, sleeve by sleeve

His bellows shaking the gymnasium

& your 9-year-old teeth, clout surging     

from his gunmetal rants & Playboy stash       

like your father’s scorn for every

anchorwoman     Praise the boys you once

raced between planets, morphing into muscle cars

& who-did-what-to-whom & how the beer

really helped     Praise the men who drink

& think the world an inkblot seeking their

impression, a road awaiting the Ferrari

of their free association     Praise the jocks

chanting pussy at anyone preferring a woman’s

company, despite having been afforded this sweet-

butter world by a feat of stamina

required of no man     Be a man like Coach Mullins

though men slap & trick & rape & chew

frailty between hair-trigger lips while

scanning women’s bodies like shoes

on a Foot Locker wall, aware, somehow

that being a man means living in a city

you never have to leave, or even know you’re in

The 1980s said bro code, said cry like a girl

made me into a notebook of missing pages

a non-boy, non-girl flask of light stopped

with a cork     In dugouts, diner booths

& bathroom stalls, every love I longed

to name: mocked, even my mother—a tiger

  lily no storm could slice, who somehow

sprang back, year after harrowing year