-Sincere Confessions-

Sure I'll race him.

He’s fat.

The slowest kid in school.

I could’ve run backward,

Backpedalled like Ginger,

Moonwalked like Michael

And got to the chain-linked fence

Separating the schoolyard from the woods

Long before him.

He’s fatso Freddie Dagada.

I’m a sprinter.
Fast as hell down the first base line.

That’s who I am.

The girls line the side of the tarmac

Like wallflowers;

Ladies in waiting; little maids in a row

To watch me run.
Ready...Set...and

The toe of my Red Ball Jet,—

The toe of the push-off sneaker, is resting

On an invisible drizzle of sand.

On the “Go!” shouted out by crazy Richard Carrier,
The kid who took it out behind the building last year
To a curious Michele Indigo,

I slip and fall to my face on the tarmac
Of the schoolyard bloodying my nose

As fatso Dagada waddles to the fence

Like a walrus pushing his weight

Toward the cow of his choosing.

The girls relax to their knees,

Returning to their game of Jacks
Which the race interrupted at twosies.

The knee of my corduroys is torn;

The skinned knee is dotted in bloody droplets like my nose.  

At home, I’ll tell my father I was in a fight.—

And that I won.

                          Hugo A. Dubuque

                          Quequechan