Give me Xbox now, still, instead of toolbox or tacklebox and—with my created boxer, pixelated— I will bang the faces of shit-talkers because I was not ready myself years ago to be disgraced by the fisticuffs cementing our high-school hierarchies. Yet, after athletic P.E., unpadded, we gathered for the daily rehearsal of our manhood myth encased in the cage of the football stadium’s aluminum bleachers. But I only refereed. My fingers were the blurry ten-count. Standing, there, did not depend on how incessantly you could mash buttons. More that your hands rumbled when socked. We stood like tackle dummies. We did not clap or console. We staggered like foals. We flung our fists like joysticks. We stood quick, or tried, no matter how battered. We rematched because blood meant risk. Each brought a clean change of clothes. When it was done, one of us uncoiled the hose.

I. You buckled my chinstrap, pulled pads over my shoulders in preparation for the last game of my only season, then sentenced me to my sorry, sidelined nickelback spot— I had feet for hands & fifty-dollar gloves on ten-cent hands—where, in just my third snap, the referee pulled his yellow flag for my horse-collar tackle on Thomas Rosamond, the opposing team’s stud back, & you yelled That horse-collar rule is horseshit, your spin on an ESPN headline, then Come on son, do work, what could have been New Iberia’s slogan, an industrious invective singing still in neurons scattered & stunted like bonsai. II. My uniform to-the-nines. Starched button-down. Margin between neck & tie large enough for two fingers. Your two fingers between my neck & collar. The only room I see is room for improvement you said. Room I associate with threat. The son you wanted has a spine staked by a shotgun. Upright, violent posture. Ribcage clenched into a white-knuckled fist. Your son never fired a gun. His collar, white & weathered as chapped lips. Your neck dark-ringed at the creases with dirt. Mine, clean.