20. always by uncles aplenty

Snow and street and rock racing
under the runners, twenty, thirty,
forty miles an hour no shame then
in screaming as long as you
call it yelling, pretending

a push on the cross bar to the right
or left could direct your
fate now. Swinging wide
round each corner hanging
on with your whole body learning
if you can’t stay on you must
roll or risk runners slicing
over hands or calves or

face. Three, four, five
at once, ropes taught from
sled to hitch to truck
driven always by uncles always
by uncles aplenty.

Pulled uphill the only time
you knew your own body’s
full weight. Rushing down you
dug in with the toes
of your boots for sliding under
the truck would be disaster or so
we’d been warned no one

had ever seen it done, the only
of our limb-risking stunts with
no medaled-hero of consequence.

How many boys had
been towed behind this truck? How fewer
girls, the most fearless
of any pack? Girls who tied their fate
to trucks could walk the hallways
ungroped as a boy, the rush
of fear the price of freedom.