If I wasn’t a musician, I’d be
    a boxer with the flurry

of a depressed southpaw.
    I’m a midwestpaw, Little Bird

eating feathers for protein.
    My trumpet is the hue of a fist

fight. It undoes the cool &
    dismembers the post-bop.

One blow puts weight on
    the face, a heaviness depending

on how much makes a night
    club buzz. When I say, blow,

I know Negroes only have
    a puncher’s chance. I once saw

Sugar Ray Robinson working
    a speed bag & thought

my breath could be his hands.
    I saw him knock a man out

with a shot to the body, a right
    hook that put one hundred sixty

pounds on his opponent’s
    kidneys. Like a gavel, the way

the body hit the canvas, disturbed
    me. It was a knowledge I was

trying to avoid. My sweet science,
    we got the anatomy wrong—

the sternum weakens like a chin,
    the mouth widens like a lung.