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.