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Sport 29: Spring 2002
Why Biographers Fudge It
Why Biographers Fudge It
In one of those games when you're asked
‘What would you be if you weren't human?’,
my sister says a silverfish. I'm certain
she thinks it a kind of metallic creature
with scales slanting reflection in moonlight
thick as paste. My brother would be a dashboard
on a car with dials in the satinwood that porthole
horizons of posh. I say a plate of nectarines
left out on a table in the yard beneath the willows,
and when it was morning they'd feel wet
as touching the sea. The grown-ups said
that's the nicest, that is, not knowing
my lack of invention, my desperate need to say
something, so that's what I said, although
silverfish and dashboard were excellent I thought
as stars, and all I could think of were those dumb
nectarines, the last thing I'd seen when called
to come in, and I thought whoever
it was left them out like that, will they cop it,
whatever their story is to cover up.