He had been in a hell of a fight
like being kicked twenty times in the head.
Of course, he would know,
like that time coming out of Driscoll’s,
fighting those three guys from the flats,
the tall one saying,
This stupid shit won’t stay down.
But they just didn’t get it.
No one ever put him down.
In our garage, the heavy bag swung,
the weight of some dead reputation.
It happens sometimes to boys,
the ones brought up on myths,
on the souls of men always told
to take the first shot.
In our world,
there was no such thing as a sucker punch.
Home now, after five days in the hospital,
after ten hours of surgery,
my brother, sober for years,
his neck carved out like a tree through wires,
turns to me, dips low, feints to the right,
and hisses—
Tumors are some nasty shit man—
then comes up fast with a hook to my body.
Gotcha!
Michael Foran lives in Ware, Massachusetts, and teaches Saturday morning Literature classes at Holyoke Community College. His most recent poems have appeared in Danse Macabre, The Bicycle Review, Ware River News, Mead: The Magazine of Literature and Libations and Paradise Found: An Anthology of Poetry about Northampton, Mass.