The click, click of old
Irish gold and wedding ring passed
from nurse to hand, after a tug
over a knuckle cracked and rooted
in the past like an old ground stump.
Across the dance floor,
at the Heidelberg bar,
after a stranger’s slap to the ass
of his wife, the fighter taught by
Meyer “Kid Carson” Cohen,
former New England welterweight
champ,
stops to remove the watch,
the gift from a brother,
gets smacked in the mouth,
and comes off the floor.
Years later, the canvas duffle
filled with old uniforms, fatigues,
and an uneasy suspicion of what is to come,
spins, as each boy, right hands tucked
behind backs, jab with windless lefts.
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.