Nice Guys

Poetry

“be a nice boy,” his grandmother had told him

from the days when he would bully his little brother

who whined far too much over much too little —

and he would scrunch his nose but oblige

because Nana always had wrapped candies hidden

in both pockets of her purple wool coat.

it still didn’t quite stick, as he grew into a troublemaker

who pulled girl’s ponytails and stuck gum on their necks,

until the day Marnie Flanders kicked him in both ankles

and he howled, hurt and a little bit shocked, the first time

he had ever really had to pay for the fruits of his actions,

a moment he would remember as he entered junior high.

“you’re a nice guy,” Davie Solomon said at a game

when the other boys were smoking weed and

making off-color comments about the cheerleaders

while he tried not to look in the direction of Marnie,

whose only greeting had been to scowl at him,

so ready to chew him out for giving her the wrong look.