Leaving the Game

I zipped, zagged, dodged dawdlers, till at the door,
the crowd jammed. Jerks packed in behind, shoving—
belly-bucking bastards—as the crowd,
in turbulent fixity, breathed in and out
together, in and out, approaching panic.
A man rose from the crowd, climbing our hot,
halted bodies, red Afro haloing
his bronze contorted face, and, from above,
his fist lashed down. A head cracked backward, thumped
my shoulder, slid the length of my stalled body,
and disappeared. We inched forward. My feet
touched nothing but concrete. Where had he gone,
the struck man? Past the gate, the crowd diverged,
and I walked hard again, dashing through gaps.
The face that raged above the crowd—I knew it:
Floyd Somebody, a boy I’d taught. Loosed
from the deadlocked crowd, breathing almost
normally now, I saw him bent to his yellow pencil,
snapping the point against the page, sharpening
and snapping it, his savage cranking as
the pencil dwindled inside his unremitting fist.