I promise the little girl in my neighborhood I’ll teach her how to throw a “real” punch once she’s in high school hoping she’ll forget about it by then but knowing someone will need to and it might as well be me since the stance is as familiar as my mothers womb and the fist, like an old lover, fits the shape of my hand so well I almost never unfold it and when I ask her why she needs to learn she doesn’t say and I know this too is an answer—that to be a girl who knows how to hit back can sometimes be a kind of violent safety and even though I’m only there to coach her on how to shoot an orange ball into an orange rim there are things her mother can’t show her, or won’t, and when she looks back up at me I sigh and say punching is a full body thing, you have to learn how to put your whole weight behind it, you need to square your feet like this, protect your thumb like this, cock your elbow back just like Wonder Woman does, then swing, and just like in basketball you have to follow through.
Taylor Franson-Thiel is a Pushcart nominated poet from Utah, now based in Fairfax, Virginia. She received her Master’s in creative writing from Utah State University and is pursuing an MFA at George Mason University. Her debut poetry collection Bone Valley Hymnal is forthcoming in March 2025 from ELJ Editions. She can be found on Twitter @TaylorFranson
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