Kailah Figueroa, a Black woman with hair pulled back, leans against a wall covered in papers
Kailah Figueroa, photo by Alexa René Rivera

Assistant Editor Kate Jayroe: Kailah Figueroa’s “When I Was a Boxer” is an adrenaline-filled pleasure from start to finish. Its rhythmic impact arrives swiftly and then proliferates delightfully—not unlike the roar of applause following the final bell.

Listen to Figueroa read the poem:

When I Was A Boxer

Text:

I was a featherweight without temperance. 

According to geometry, it’s quadrilateral. According to my fist, it’s greedy—always aiming 

for liquidized gold & connecting every time—even after the referee calls off the match. 

I didn’t wait for the first punch to make a fighter out of me. At twenty, I learned that 

the difference between running toward something & running away is not contingent 

upon velocity or distance; it’s a matter of footwork. In & out of consciousness. 

Every round. Don’t give up your height. Remember your meridian. The breath, the heel, 

the twist, the tight of knuckle & blood & bone. There is no simple answer as to how 

I got to that point or why I kept coming back. I took body shot after body shot; shot, 

another shot, another shot—the knockout came without warning & in the morning 

I refused the footage. In the evening I was back in the square. This is how champions 

are made—it’s ancestral. I learned from my greats. I warmed up. Beer pong. Flip cup. 

Baseball. Now, it’s not a matter of technique but a matter of speed. First round. Body shots. 

Second round. Crossed. Third round. Uppercut. Fourth. Jab. Fifth. Jaded. I kept going. 

Sixth. Seventh—blackout. I did it over & over again. No new opponents. 

I headlined every night. 

Kailah Figueroa is a rhetorical engineer with work published in Poetry Northwest, Black Warrior Review, Pigeon Pages, and others. Awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Commission and Vermont Studio Center, a Pushcart Prize nominee, she is a current poetry MFA candidate at Rutgers University–Newark. More at kailahfigueroa.com

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