UMBROS POEM

Sad! I wrote a long poem about KRANG from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I was going to post it here but then I reread it and thought seriously, "This is the best poem I've ever written," and sent it to The Paris Review, ha ha. So here is a make-up poem for you:

Right Now I Am Thinking

I wish someone in the world would write a really good poem
about Umbros

Who could do it, could Ana Božičević or Elisa Gabbert or perhaps even
Tao Lin do it

A main thing to talk about is how they were checkered, and how some
of the checks they shone, and some of the checks they were dull

They were held on your body with a shoelace in a far simpler way
than your sneakers, which you tied with textbook technique

(Later you would marry a man who did idiot things with rabbit ears)

Your legs underneath them were ablaze with gross young golden hair,
you wore them under your school skirt like a powerful real identity

Power was what you couldn't decide: no girl wanted X-ray vision,
except for you the pervert

How does an Item, previously invisible, suddenly become Necessary
to conquer your nudity

Umbros were founded in the year 1910, in the year 1990 you believed
that Dick van Dyke was British

You believed he was a model British citizen, who spilled marmalade
in the shape of UK on his trousers

You believed that Julie Andrews was American, and had somehow
given birth to you through her strong blond throat

Umbros were for soccer--in the year 1990, America saw that soccer
was real

Was a country we could possibly conquer, and the television
played shows of only green fields

Instead of walking Americans began to do simple forward footwork

You played soccer a single season, and when at last they let you be goalie
you stood in the goal and cried,

Longing to grip on black-and-white, longing to catch the flying text,

Unable to even raise your arm, unable to raise it even one inch