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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