Names of Old Teammates
by Robert Brickhouse
Spike
ran our rival’s T-plays
on the scout team
with such joy
the coaches put him in the real game
to baffle and wreak havoc.
Moose
hitchhiked to school with no breakfast
no braggadocio, anchored
both sides of the line, retired
a multi-millionaire.
Willy
wore thick glasses with a head band,
wasn’t fast or strong,
guided us up and down the court
with calm precision.
Rags
had a gentle heart, a twisted
smile if he liked you,
sharp elbows if he didn’t and
a fo’-barrel fifty-fo’ Ford.
Bokey
could barely see
over the middle he backed. Any
runner who got that far
never knew what hit him.
Bugsy
saved my ass one night
when I walked alone through his part of town.
Challenged to a fight by a dimwit in a beater,
I said “you know Bugsy?”
He said “any friend of Bugsy’s is a friend of mine.”
Bull
led the state in sacks and held the shotput record.
He’d lock his hands behind his head
at the end of every wind sprint,
strut around to catch his breath and teach us
how good it was to be alive.
Robert Brickhouse, a multi-sport benchwarmer in his youth, has worked as a newspaper reporter and writer for university publications in Virginia. His poems and short stories have appeared in many magazines, among them the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Poet Lore, the Texas Review, Atlanta Review, Pleiades, and Light Quarterly. “Names of Old Teammates” first appeared in the American Journal of Poetry.