The Last Time I Saw Jack

by John Arthur

Raymond Petrik

he was beautiful out there two years after graduation, the day before Thanksgiving, surrounded by a stadium of sugar maples, playing tackle with guys still strong enough to kill each other with one lowered shoulder, no pads, dodging defenders and stiff arming, spinning, our bodies sliding one by one down his hard, lean body, my lips pressing to his leg in one final desperate kiss as he shed me, advancing to an end zone that had no lines, all of us agreeing that to score you just had to make it past the trees

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John Arthur is a writer, musician, and librarian from New Jersey. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, failbetter, Maudlin House, Third Wednesday, and One Sentence Poems. His band is The Deafening Colors.