A Golden Shovel after “Sixth Grade Hockey on Greenfield Rink”  by Paul Mariani

[At the very end of each line, the last word makes up a quote from this poem.]

there’s a boy in south texas who doesn’t know what he wants. he 

knows he has to do what pops says and that teachers and cops are the same in terms of ego, and that he must 

make everyone he meets proud somehow 

but the game he plays is the game nobody knows, his face

a broken platter that the doctor didn’t know how to fix. the 

ache in his knees is ever present now, so strange for a boy so young, his white-

knuckled grip on nothing the only thing keeping him sane, his masked 

body weighed down by kevlar padding and carbon fiber, the skin over his bones insufficient in protecting hiding the self he deems a monster 

and his momma won’t pay for a new skull. she and pops didn’t want this for him and 

that’s why they say if he ain’t on television in five years they’ll send 

him to the hottest army base in arizona. the 

truth is that they wanted to raise a football superstar, hefting this missive

of expectation onto the boy they thought would be the next big thing. the truth is that he’s 

never liked the heat, keeps his room cold so he can pretend he’s been 

up north this whole time. the truth is that he tried to be quarterback for a month because pops said he’d never touch ice again if he didn’t, and he hated it so much he charged 

the first boy that hinted at the slightest provocation, a lowered head and an uttered faggot quickly replaced with 

a bruised brain and a busted lip. so pops relented with a sigh and a glare, and then his son was wheeling 

from concrete to white ice, his jersey black and gold on his parents’ tv screen. there’s a boy on the bruins from south texas who knows what he wants and doesn’t do what his pops says, with a hometown called disappointment; he lives in a city where it snows, now, where everybody knows the game he plays and the doctors say he’ll make it through.