Mighty Pawns

If I told you Earl, the toughest kid

on my block in North Philadelphia,

bow-legged and ominous, could beat

any man or woman in ten moves playing white,

or that he traveled to Yugoslavia to frustrate the bearded

masters at the Belgrade Chess Association,

you'd think I was given to hyperbole,

and if, at dinnertime, I took you

into the faint light of his Section 8 home

reeking of onions, liver, and gravy,

his six little brothers fighting on a broken love-seat

for room in front of a cracked flat-screen,

one whose diaper sags it's a wonder

it hasn't fallen to his ankles,

the walls behind doors exposing the sheetrock

the perfect O of a handle, and the slats

of stairs missing where Baby-boy gets stuck

trying to ascend to a dominion foreign to you and me

with its loud timbales and drums blasting down

from the closed room of his cousin whose mother

stands on a corner on the other side of town

all times of day and night, except when her relief

check arrives at the beginning of the month,

you'd get a better picture of Earl's ferocity

after-school on the board in Mr. Sherman's class,

but not necessarily when he stands near you

at a downtown bus-stop in a jacket a size too

small, hunching his shoulders around his ears,

as you imagine the checkered squares of his poverty

and anger, and pray he does not turn his precise gaze

too long in your direction for fear he blames

you and proceeds to take your Queen.

Source: Roll Deep (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2015)