My first punch-weak-boned, hateful little beast.
Its ancestors—those fistfights erupting from the snow
between the older boys in the after school program,
T-shirts and shorts in twenty-four degrees,
red faces, ruddy knuckles. My first punch
born to a warmer climate—fifth-grade
spring, my best buddy Jeff with a new iPod
Touch I watched him play while we rode
to school, sticky brown leather on Bus 109.
Jack and Hunter, Back Road boys in the seat behind—
my first punch’s mother and father. Jack I think
who cupped our ears and cracked my head
against Jeff’s. Temple to temple.
My first punch crowned, squalling. I threw it
backwards because I did not want to look at it—
tossed a fist over my shoulder like dark clods of earth,
like I was digging, a trowel in my hand.
It must have looked so funny. I heard Hunter giggling.
I don’t know if I hit him. I don’t know who I hit.
I know this was the first tenderness a boy gave me—
Jeff’s skull and mine, ringing like a wedding bell.
Jack’s hands in the after, holding us in our pain.
Boyhood
James King is a poet from New Hampshire, transplanted to the Carolinas. His poems have appeared in Bear Review, Exposition Review, Chautauqua, Anti-Heroin Chic, Humana Obscura, and others. James is the recipient of the 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize from Dartmouth College, a finalist in the 2023 NC State Poetry Competition, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Wilmington, NC, where he works as an editor and the coordinator for the UNCW Young Writers Workshop. He can be found on Instagram @jamn_king and on his website Jamesedwardking.net.