poem where the poet is on antonio brown’s side through all of this

(with excerpts from Jon Gruden’s phone call with Antonio Brown)

When I open my mouth about you, praise
is masked like carnations & sugarplums.

I make the whole damn spot a garden
about you. You’re the most misunderstood

fucking human being in my entire life that I’ve ever
met. I turn my television to your games & when

I get there they’re already beautiful. We praise
you because we love you & you’ve fed us every

Sunday & we talk about you running routes like
a shadow, coercing ghosts out of your legs for

six points, god of joy & finesse. All I know is you
got a lot of things going on. I won’t lie, all these seasons

later, I miss you, but I get it. Six points isn’t always
enough. There’s a lot of people that have an opinion

about you. I hope you gather around with your
teammates in the end-zone again & dance for the

fun of it. I didn’t know a damn thing about
superstardom until you walked into Cleveland &

put on a whole fucking clinic, grew a whole field of
landmines in my mouth each time I said a prayer

& you made a one-handed catch like a true god,
putting the nail in the coffin on my Browns.

I have always hated you, but I love you for your
delicious no-fucks-given attitude. You turned a

whole sport into a love language. You are gonna piss
a lot of people off when you start doing what’s best for you.

I, too, have given my body to someone & been
left abandoned & wanted something better.

Matt Mitchell is an intersex writer from Warren, Ohio trying to make his work as beautiful as “Keep On Loving You” by REO Speedwagon, the quintessential pop banger. He has a music column, “Timefighters & Unbelievers: Illustrated Essays on Music & Identity” in Flypaper Lit and is a member of the Northeast Ohio poetry group Sad Kids Superhero Collective. His chapbook, you & me & the pink moon & these portraits, is out with Ghost City Press. He also has poems in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Drunk Monkeys, and BARNHOUSE, among others.