Urban Renewal XVIII.

By Major Jackson Major Jackson

How untouchable the girls arm-locked strutting

up the main hall of Central High unopposed

for decades looked. I flattened myself against

the wall, unnerved by their cloudsea of élan,

which pounced upon any timid girl regrettably

in their way, their high-wattage lifting slow motion

like curls of light strands of honey. The swagger

behind their blue-tinted sunglasses and low-rider

jeans hurt boys like me, so vast the worlds

between us, even the slightest whiff of recognition,

an accidental side glance, an unintended tongue-piercing

display of Juicy Fruit chew, was intoxicating

and could wildly cast a chess-playing geek into

a week-long surmise of inner doubts, likelihoods,

and depressions. You might say my whole life led

to celebrating youth and how it snubs and rebuffs.

Back then I learned to avoid what I feared

and to place my third-string hopes on a game-winning

basketball shot, sure it would slow them to a stop,

pan their lip-glossed smiles, blessing me with their cool.

Source: Hoops (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 2006)

Biography

Major Jackson's books of poems are Holding Company (2010, Norton) and Hoops (2006, Norton), both finalists for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry, and Leaving Saturn (2002, University of Georgia Press), which was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. He is a recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and has been . . .

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