Trying (for J.B.)<\/p>\n
The entire time he sets up a strike he strains<\/p>\n
eyes closed as if God had forgotten His keys and come back in for them<\/p>\n
He paints crosses on his fingers and toenails<\/p>\n
I watch the little white crosses while he goes for the pad.<\/p>\n
\n
His arm is extended but bent at the elbow<\/p>\n
his palm is more of a door-knock fist<\/p>\n
he leans in and delivers upon the pad<\/p>\n
then jerks back into place<\/p>\n
\n
We have worked this strike since the beginning<\/p>\n
Since I lined his holy feet up more than shoulder width<\/p>\n
his eyes were closed then<\/p>\n
but he didn’t hit as hard<\/p>\n
\n
He’ll stick with it until the end<\/p>\n
training each muscle and synapse<\/p>\n
eventually his eyes will be open wide<\/p>\n
and with a hit, he’ll disintegrate the pad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trying (for J.B.) The entire time he sets up a strike he strains eyes closed as if God had forgotten His keys and come back in for them He paints crosses on his fingers and toenails I watch the little white crosses while he goes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3743,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3743"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100242,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100233\/revisions\/100242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}