Barbershop Legends

(Published in the James Dickey Review Vol. 37 2021)

Come sit down, youngblood

And hold real still

While I cut your head

And tell you tales

Of the last of the barbershop legends

The best ballers

You’ve never heard of

Who never made it

Past that imaginary county line

Who once could run circles around defenders

Until smoke took their lungs

Who once could handle the rock like an extension of their limbs

Until drugs caused their hands to shake, nerves to wane

Who once could pick coins off the rim in a single jump

Until diabetes took their legs

Sugar and fat causing their weight to redouble upon this earth

Who once could run these courts care free, pick up games every weekend

Until lust gave them children to ignore, women to escape, alimony to pay

Their sneakers long since traded for liquor bottles

Or worse

Oh they could have gone pro

Just ask them

You can find them all around

That one boy still has the high school record for most points

The number burned into a plaque high in the trophy case

But he cannot read it from his cell, upstate, doing 8 years for armed robbery

Was it the Johnson kid had a scholarship waiting?

His education in trade for putting that ball through the hoop

He left the papers unsigned on the table

Took a job with his uncle fixing cars

Has a hoop over the loading bay he cannot look at without crying

Remember that boy who could dunk in junior high?

Yonder on the wall is a newspaper with him on the front page

Died of drugs that same year at season’s end

That picture you see is the last basket he would ever make

Where have they all gone

These hometown legends

Now blacktop kings

Proudly telling the world who they were

Struggling to hide from what they are

Searching for what is left

There now, your hair is done

You rise in long shorts, a stained jersey

Shoes half a size too big

But you will grow

Are still growing into a man

Your moves may come, youngblood

Perhaps even glory

But they will fade with one ill decision

So steeped in finality

Go live your life well

And I will pray

That I never see that head again

To cut in the darkness of this single chair

Surrounded by framed ghosts on the walls that taunt us

And the broken husks of men in chairs waiting their turn

Quick to remind us they are

The last of the barbershop legends