Now his nose-s bridge is broken, one eye
will not focus and the other is a stray;
trainers whisper in his mouth while one ear
listens to itself, clenched like a fist;
generally shadowboxing in a smoky room,
his mind hides like the aching boys
who lost a contest in the Panhellenic games
and had to take the back roads home,
but someone else, his perfect youth,
laureled in newsprint and dollar bills,
triumphs forever on the great white way
to the statistical Sparta of the champs.
On Hurricane Jackson
Alan Dugan
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Poem topics: home, lost, perfect, forever, white, great, room, mouth, mind, whisper, broken, bridge, stray, youth, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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Write your comment about On Hurricane Jackson poem by Alan Dugan
Bink Owen: This is simply a stunning character portrayal of a boxer. What a delicious study! I once used this poem in a high school Humanities class--the students, all of them, were so captivated by the concrete imagery of a boxer. The athlete, like Updike's "Ex-Basketball Player."
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