LEXICON

An entire thesaurus looms before me and my next word,

which I try not to acknowledge.

My boxers' gloves strike out; I take a rebound on the jaw.

Dizzy, I think I feel eternity in one tiny ooze above the left eye.

It doesn't matter whose.

That devil my father told me of death in not so many words

one sunny day in '62, saying those photos which, no,

I could not have, would be mine, WHEN.

Every day I go to the ring, and there they are confronting me --

sounds with meanings I don't understand: tantalizing, taunting.

I grow old, begin to flail blindly, hoping for an accidental hit.

I keep walking, one word before the other

hoping to stumble onto just one that's as gleaming,

as forthcoming, as much a lexicon, as one pinprick

of a father's cold blood.

Copyright Julianza Shavin 2008