So they fought -- not easy himself to cope with. It was also around this time that the boxer began to really see, to ease up from the girl next door. This girl was made unhappy because her baby died -- frail girl, alone in her small room, if I remember correctly. How strange, the small baby reaching toward anything motherlike. How strange her sticky candy fingers twisted, and sour milk all over her face. She almost managed to live, growing sticks for arms and legs small and weak. Someone once walked her in a neglected park and she crumbled. Somebody walked her again in the neglected park and she buckled. One night she rolled over onto a radiator -- her tiny ribs arms face grilling, frying all night, while her mother, drunk and wet with a fighter boxing in his sleep on her, with the TV still going. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CHURCHILL'S GRAVE by GEORGE GORDON BYRON BALLAD: TIME OF ROSES by THOMAS HOOD RICH AND POOR; OR, SAINT AND SINNER by THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK MUSIC IN THE NIGHT by HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD THE MORAL FABLES: THE TALE OF THE COCK, AND THE JEWEL by AESOP THE FUGITIVE by LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA THE STEAM-ENGINE: CANTO 6. ON THE CORK PACKET, 1837 by T. BAKER ON THE DEATH OF MRS. JENNINGS by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD THE BABES IN THE WOOD; OR, THE NORFOLK TRAGEDY by RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM |