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The Fighter
After the last one hangs up the gloves
and goes home, he’s all mop and scrub,
a bucket of cleaner, a white canvas sack
full of sweat-stained and blood-flecked
towels used to sop the heads of kids
half his age. Some nights, he strikes
a fighter’s pose and throws a few jabs
at the body bag. He’s right at home
for a moment, twenty years ago, steel
in his veins and abs like a radiator rack.
The body fails. All bodies do. He spit
years into buckets that filled with bile
after factories and rounds of layoffs
and divorce and sons who don’t call
no matter how many years pass. Once
he closed his eyes at night and visioned
a life held high above a cheering crowd.
Never a boxer, he wishes he’d found
the sport. He wrestles the janitor caddy
to a stop and throws a few phantom
punches at his shadow on the wall,
where the young men fight themselves.
He can’t win this fight. The man knows
every feint already. This sparring
partner has made the same moves for years.
Jeff Newberry
Jeff Newberry's most recent book is How to Talk About the Dead (Red Hawk Publications, forthcoming). An essayist, novelist, and poet, his writing has appeared in a wide variety of print and online journals, including Brevity: Concise Nonfiction, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Red Rock Review, and Laurel Review.