The Boxer
Slight bent knees, butt back, perfect
bow of the legs to sure the stance.
Tender covered wrists in shame
of their weaponhood. Modesty
a baggy short, cock light and folded
on the thighs. His body argument,
thrown sixes, he fell in full delight—
and rushed and made alive his thrill
as others do chance and gamble, the passive
and the active. Above-belt fun sportsmen like.
Fans in the crowd as though from port
to ferry, families those years on the way
out. (No brother to train.) His old man proud
in the shuffle: that great great
pride of impassioned people, and with passion those volts
that make the feeling being. Maybe
he worked the circuit, KO’d
and went pro—then, around my age,
before the boat before the war:
one wrapped, gloved or bone-fisted gutpunch:
one knuckle-bruised organ: the bleeding no century
could stop. He sprang a deep well
inches to a man, pleasure no matter the pressure
nor pleaser marriage of gold-tipped nerve
and appendage guts jostled just so the cup of each
broad breast hunched to lurch any moment one
small dent and the first of his siblings to die in the old country.
A Rub Is Just a Rub
D always wanted massages
and I’d oblige, take feet and knead. She’d plead,
offer money I kept tabbed but would have anyway
just to be trodden. Roadie told me
pray for a wife and I thought I could—
will it, that is—I didn’t pray
or wish it really
in that no one heard—I blew it,
woodlocked at the chamber’s
hot hard edge, tearing my back to slats
and splattering a wide-legged
sauna offer. Dude tugged his
sac, clasp of his towel
and flopped right up to straightness. Said
a rub is a rub is a rub
but I’m not gay I replied
—my last time lying. Will
get it anywhere a mist is thick;
feel a stitch up a chest, scarred parts
of a stand-in; match a trapped
stiffy, a heart-shaped bald spot,
gray pube; pass a bar to a bud;
honk into a drain; dangle over an updraft.
Will Russo is the author of two chapbooks: Dreamsoak (Querencia Press, 2023) and Glass Manifesto, winner of the 2023 Rick Campbell Chapbook Award from Anhinga Press. Recent work has appeared in Seaford Review, Dialogist, and Burial Magazine. He is poetry reviews editor at Another Chicago Magazine and received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dodo Eraser 
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