“Fulfill the Dream”

Shorty’s Skateboards team video, 1998

The three of us pooled our money—
made mostly from mowing,
recycling bottles & cans
whose syrups congealed in the sweaty,
dank darkness all August.
Together we could just afford
the last copy left at the skateshop.

School that year was a haze.
At least I managed to study
over & over the cavalier
grace of each Muska flip,
regular & switch. From this
one stuttering series of frames
we derived a hunger to ride
until we rolled our ankles,
to push until our legs
were too exhausted to risk
those dangerous urethane pleasures.

I remember we passed
the cassette back & forth—
& you laughed when
the tape finally ate itself.
You unwound it from its plastic
wheels, dragged it out
from one end of our street
to the other. We played
one more game of SKATE
in the egg of light cast
by the streetlamp between our houses.
I remember you landed the hardflip;
I don’t remember who won.

Larry Narron's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Phoebe, Bayou, Hobart, Booth, and Sugar House Review, among others. They've been nominated for the Best of the Net and Best New Poets. Larry's first chapbook, Wasted Afterlives, was published in 2020 by Main Street Rag.