One Minute Forty-Five of the First Round, by Henry Crawford

Dempsey and Firpo, by George Bellows (b. USA), 1924.

​One Minute Forty-Five of the First Round

[flash] [flash] [flash] and you’re [Sonny Liston]
just punched down in [Ektachrome] color
hit by the hardest man on Earth [flash] [flash]
and he’s standing above you [daring you to get up]
[flash] [flash] [flash] your [brain] has just been
smashed against the wall of your skull [you can’t hear]
[flash] [flash] your body is floating in seas of Africa
and he’s daring you [“get up and fight sucker”]
[flash] [flash] [flash] you can’t see the glowering white
[mouthpiece] you have no legs [flash] [flash]
but [maybe you’re the photographer] and you’ve stopped
down the aperture [to deepen the focus]
compositionally [Clay’s arm] forms a line that connects
with [Liston’s raised knee] [Clay’s glove is raised] erect
this is suffering you don’t want to get wrong
[this is your dad talking now, “don’t screw it up”]
so you open the lens to take in more of the ring
and now it’s like a floating king-sized bed of pain
but here comes the light [a sudden fleck of blood] 
then a single [bead of sweat] comes into focus
through all the smoky dark and that’s the shot

Henry Crawford

Editor's Note: Henry Crawford's poem was a response to a famous 1965 photo by Neil Leifer called Ali-Liston (click here to view). Unfortunately the fees to show the image were not feasible, so we substituted another wonderful image,  a painting by George Bellows. Thank you for clicking through to view the photograph on which the poem is based.

Henry Crawford is a poet living and writing in the Washington, DC area. His work has appeared in several journals and online publications including Boulevard, Copper Nickel, Folio, Borderline Press and The Offbeat. He is a 2016 nominee for a Pushcart Prize for his poem “The City of Washington” appearing in District Lit. His first collection of poetry, American Software, is scheduled for publication in the Spring of 2017 by WordTech Communications through its imprint, CW Books.