[New-Poetry] pugilist poems

[jforjames at aol.com]

FLYING OVER SONNY LISTON


Sonny Liston is on all fours, 
trying to rise, a flame of pain 
in the center of his head. 
The crowd noise blurs, 
then distances, as though he is shut 
in a room by himself. 
In his face there is silence. 
His skin glistens with sweat, 
& the glare & flurry of camera flashes 
are far-away lights in his eyes. 
Cassius Clay thin & sharp, stands 
above him, arms in a recited W. 
The airplane rises over the cemetery 
where Liston is buried 
next to the runway at McCarran Airport. 
What I recall is his bad press-- 
how he learned to box in prison, 
how he hung out with the worst people. 
His violence & his size, 
a film clip of him 
sullenly jumping rope 
to a record of "Night Train." 
A woman in a pink blouse sits next to me. 
Her fingers try to memorize a thick crucifix 
on a chain around her neck. 
? She's nervous. But from this safe distance, 
looking out the oval window 
& beyond the wing, I see the cross 
of the airplane shadowing grave sites. 
A boxer knows momentum 
can suddenly shift. One blow 
changes everything. 
The plane lifts. Closing my eyes, I hear 
the referee's eight-count, the knockout signaled. 
Liston is out of time & still on his knees, 
suffering & silent, "Inarticulate 
in the way we all are," James Baldwin wrote, 
"when more has happened to us 
than we know how to express." 
In eight seconds an aircraft can bank into 
& fly through fists of clouds 
above the city of Las Vegas 
& the grave of Sonny Liston. 
He died alone in a motel room. 
His life was nothing like mine, 
& so we share a solitariness, 
like the passengers on this plane who rise 
or fall together 
& individually, each with defeats. 
The fight for survival is the fight. 


Gary Short
from the book Flying Over Sonny Liston (University of Nevada Press).


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