by Patricia Lockwood

First no one could dunk and then they all could.

The dunk evolved, and then stood upright, was even

perceived to be intelligent, with too big a brain

at the top of it, the ball. It grew upright and smooth-

skinned with a tendency toward religion, the dunk

stood up too fast, they said, and consequently has

headaches, and trouble breathing in spring when

it is so beautiful. The childhood of the dunk

                                                was no childhood at all.

He practiced on a paper route, throwing The Sun

to the same place each morning. Did not sleep long

but when he slept, the springs of his bed imparted

something to him. At night the streetlight floated

down and let him dribble it. Then there was school

there was every day school where he crumpled up

tests and he tossed them in the trashcan. He shouted

TWO POINTS and had to stay after and copy out

the “football” page of the dictionary, which could not

keep him down -- he saw writers of the dictionary

at their desks, performing small silent neat dunks.

The crowd of the devoted watching. Like watching

is reading. Like it isn't. The dunk felt like a leather

study in space, and someone thinking how inside him,

and a perfected body in a leather chair wondering

just how far he can push himself. A leap sometimes

occurs within an animal, the dunk felt that happen

within him. He landed sure on his feet again and then

he was wholly himself. A joint so surely in its socket,

the whole city could go walking on it. All the rain

            comes down at once in a single bounding drop,

and the wells of the countryside look up at once full,

and no open mouth is thirsty, and every mouth is open.

A great heavy body it weighed the dunk down. The dunk

and the moon pulled it up like the sea. The crowd of us

shouted his name to dunk him deep into himself. More

than half-moons in his fingertips, and rising through the air

in a loud round translation,

                        and the air right then breathing him back.

Was the only complete thing in the world, was the dunk.

                        Well that and everyone who watched it.

Goosebumps even on the ball. The ball spinning like

bodies could live on it, and whatever led up to the bodies

too. It stood up too fast, it got taller and taller, its women get

bellies like basketballs. A woman dunking! That'll be the day.

Yet here I am sailing over your heads, and then,

                                                with the sound, slamming into them.

---

Read “The Dunk, Through and Through,” Patricia Lockwood’s chronicle of writing this poem.

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