my brand-new shoes, white

as Isiah Thomas’ teeth

when he smiled, and he always

smiled, soaring toward the rim

like a kite, the other team’s coach

screaming for a second string.

If I’d been Jordan, I might have called

my shoes fly like Jordan flew,

the whole world staring at his wings,

the whole world falling at his feet,

but I was who I was, so I said, Neat.

These shoes are so neat, I said

to my mom, begging her

to buy them the night before tryouts

in Ames department store,

which was just as good

as the stores they had in towns

big enough to have malls.

But I was from Calais, Maine,

spelled like Calais, France,

said like the rough patches

on all the millworkers’ hands.

You could fit the whole town of Calais

into Madison Square Garden

seven times, meaning I could have

seven seats all my own to watch

Patrick Ewing’s hook shot

turn the defense into the kind of fish

my uncles would catch and throw back

because they were just too small.

Calais was known for being the first town

to receive the distress signal

that the Titanic was going down

and not getting there in time,

so I arrived to the gym early

and watched my new shoes float

from the locker room to the bleachers

where I counted seventy-four seats—

sixty-four if everyone were the size

of Larry Bird or Hakeem Olajuwon

or Muggsy Bogues’s heart, or Charles Barkley

who I loved watching because he always threw

tantrums like a kid, and I liked knowing

I could still be myself

when I grew up.

I was on the baseline waiting

for the coach to blow the whistle

for the sprint when Jamie Lorde threw

a chest pass of words directly at my face:

Andrea’s wearing plastic shoes!

she belted, until I was triple teamed

by laughter, the other kids repeating,

Andrea’s got plastic shoes!

Up until then I hadn’t known

what leather was. Didn’t know the rule

that killing something made it worth more

and my shoes had never screamed

and therefore would never bleed

the word cool all over the court.

For a moment, basketball was a moon

I wished I could deflate to turn back

the calendar to Ames department store

right before my mother’s crescent grin

said, Yeah, kiddo, those shoes

are pretty neat. I guess

you can have them. But I couldn’t

turn back time, so I tried to think of something

smart to say. Something Magic

Johnson would have said

if trash talking had earned him his name.

But I was a mismatch for Mean, had no chance

of blocking Mean’s shots. Mean jab-stepped,

and I was fooled into my benching joy,

into benching the truth

that I loved my new shoes

more than Isiah Thomas loved his teeth

when he bit the cork off the champagne

three years in a row for Detroit,

a city that would keep those trophies

as their gold when the last factory