In Another Life
Borrowed gloves take
someone else’s hands: put on
take off. Tie tight after
wrapping wrapping rapping
fingers, knuckles taped just
right. Secure, not tight.
Secure. I can dance on
canvas. Relax. Turn and point.
Pirouette without tulle.
Hair pulled back in a ballerina’s
knot. Tattoos line my eyes,
brow. No make-up sweats
streaming, stinging. My
wrists are relaxed, my right fist
compresses your jaw,
explodes becoming stone
that fells you, I am a mallet
striking ribs. Look for soft
tissue under your daily regimens.
You look for mine. But Irish
bones are dense. You bounce
off me. I am hard rubber
over steel rims. I roll over
you and around you.
This dance is mine today.
You can see it in the set
of my blue eyes over black gloves.
* * *
Inspired by Juliet’s call to another life. Here’s where you can find others’.
I really should have been a boxer. In my younger days I was fearless, with a high pain threshold, bit of a temper, quite physical, ready to give it a go, wrestling like the tom boy I was. I do have a lot of Irish blood in me, and read somewhere ages ago that Irish have dense body structures and that is what makes them good boxers and fighters. (And you thought it was only poverty and alcohol.)
Last week I took a tumble and fell, hard, on my chin. I can take a blow fairly well for a middle-age woman. Although I don’t want to do that again, I can muse about what my boxing career could have been. Rather than dancing like the ballerina I always wanted to be, I could dance in the ring and make good use of my ferocity. Not quite girlie-girl fare, is it? Ah. But that’s the thing with imagination.
Also inspired by one of my favorite songs, “The Boxer,” written by Simon and Garfunkel, as sung by Emmylou Harris.
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An intriguing life! Enjoyed that.
This is so so wonderful! I love it. Very sexy, very vivid.
I like this. Very descriptive, giving voice to the visceral.
i like that you’ve worked in some of the sensations of your fall, and i love reading about the grit inside the narrator and her dense bones.
p.s. i’m more boxer than ballerina, too.
This is wonderful………a really, really enjoyable piece. I’m neither boxer nor ballerina, though I sure am feisty (though that’s surely down to the Irish temper…..funnily enough, I have very dense, heavy bones……..I didn’t know that was the reason). I have a pathetically low pain threshold.
I really dig the way you combine the ideas of boxer and ballerina to suggest the gracefulness of the fighters.
Cool, cool, kool! Love the wrapping wrapping rapping!
“I am hard rubber
over steel rims.”
I love the sound of it, and the image…
Yes! It’s perfect, Deb. It made me want to hit something. It called forth my inner boxer. I could feel the memory of all my fights in my bones while I read it. Awesome.
Have you ever tried sock wrestling? We used to have to do it in basketball to increase aggressiveness. It’s a super-fun, mostly-safe way to pseudo-fight. Highly recommended. I want to get together with a bunch of poets who will try sock wrestling with me.
Very fine.
This brought to my mind as something along the lines of the movie/story The Red Shoes (Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on.)
Very vivid! I used to want to be a ballerina but there was no chance of that! Boxing never occured to me!
In light of the Chris Brown, Rhianna incident, this made me wince. This could be about familial relations, but intimate relationships are equally vunerable and volatile. At first I missed the shift from dance to fight. It was so graceful and therefore when I caught it, it felt like being hit.
The writing is so clear, concise and tight. The tension is so wrought without being forced. Well done, Deb.
Hello :) Just dropping by to say that I enjoyed the poem. Have a great day!