Boxer at Rest
after Boxer at Rest, 330 to 50 B.C.
limp head turned right to hide
pain, ice pack just as penetrating
as the firm heavyweight grip that helped pay to feed
the muscles now torn, left to dangle
feet, arms on knees, half expecting the man
she felt I needed in my life to remove
bloodied hand wraps - dried, fresh - his, mine meaning
hers too - a girl not yet my mother who told blue
shirts “I felt like a ragdoll” as they watched
her lip turn purple as I floated
in blood - mine, hers, his, the man
whose upper hook - like clenched calloused fists
of iron muscle wrought in a lost
-wax foundry, lacerations soldered onto a cold
bronze body above a vacant, lost
gaze inlaid with copper, blood on the right
shoulder, forearm, cestus, thigh, toes so worn
by worshipful touching before burial
in aerated mud, perfect to preserve hibernating bronze,
poison to what human remains until resurrection
from boggy grave, head still cocked, eye’s shine
stolen, archeologists calling his discovery an awakening
from a long repose after a gallant fight, just as I did
when forced to stand ground
at school with knees to the groin,
defending a family name dripping blood,
returning home only to spar again
with a man who held no title, except father,
who tonight held my arm just well enough
to send me to this ER, the same one they took her
and my floating self after she said she couldn’t even gasp;
she still married him to have a man in my life, he
who promised to change everything
but his livelihood (to punch, shed more
of the other’s blood than your own); I lost
tonight, a rematch decades in the making; I lost, left
looking right, a slight bend at the waist, scared
how fast a fist formed then flew when he called
his former punching bag a slur meant
to hurt leaving me without
any breaths other than these to describe the look
on his face, as if gazing at a mirror
and the future - heads bent, looking over the shoulder
- how the blood splattered over
my hands could be set in bronze.
STEVEN HOLLANDER is a poet and prose writer based in Chicago, IL. His work has been published by OPOSSUM and Punt Volat.