but I’ll take a laugh
and let my cup of the world
overflow with the silliness of Neymar
diving. How, down and grimacing,
he rolls through traffic
and hedges and pedestrians
and a mountainous avalanche
of scorn, even though he’s crazy
good, can sprint and shoot,
and knows how to bend a ball
into that netted prism of joy
and stinging disappointment.
Yes, in this season of imprisonments
and separations with little kids
crying for mamás, tías, y papis
I’ll take the break to watch him roll.
Yes, I wish I could save everything
like Belgium’s Courtois in the air
with his right hand keeping
disaster at bay. Oh, I know
that I’m in the handbasket
headed for triple digit swelters
and worse with Pruitt handing it off
to Wheeler, another dealer
of deals as dirty as coal.
And I know that memes may be
the flimsiest of shields—
like Heartfield’s bold and stunning art
against all that blood and soil
of the bloody nineteen-thirties,
but sometimes somebody needs
a little comic relief, a bit of a break,
even if it ends with our mocked hero
rolling his roll in the hilarious web
of some giant spider spinning him
in steely silk so it can come back later
to feast on his liquefied remains.
READ MORE
Meme Goals: Brazil’s star Neymar is on a roll at the World Cup [2018]
Neymar Memes [Heavy]
Matthew Murrey is a poet whose writings have appeared in various journals such as Tar River Poetry, Poetry East, and Rattle. He received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry a number of years ago, and his first book, Bulletproof, will be published by Jacar Press. He is a high school librarian in Urbana, Illinois where he lives with his partner. They have two sons who live in the Pacific Northwest.
