My Grandmother in the Arms of the Boxer
Fire Island, summer 1937
Just out of the water
they are silver vessels
for good fortune, silk-skinned
advertisements for lost time.
He is the former world
heavyweight champion.
She is a teenage ballerina
who studies French in the attic
while eating Bermuda onions
with cold bottled milk.
Their torsos barely touch.
Whether they will meet again
nobody can say better
than the great hurricane
soon to obliterate
these days in Cherry Grove.
He is handsome and huge
cupped around her
like a sail. On her toes
in the arms of a man
whose fists have killed
another man twice her size
she is, as I never knew her
fearless.
Just out of the water
they are silver vessels
for good fortune, silk-skinned
advertisements for lost time.
He is the former world
heavyweight champion.
She is a teenage ballerina
who studies French in the attic
while eating Bermuda onions
with cold bottled milk.
Their torsos barely touch.
Whether they will meet again
nobody can say better
than the great hurricane
soon to obliterate
these days in Cherry Grove.
He is handsome and huge
cupped around her
like a sail. On her toes
in the arms of a man
whose fists have killed
another man twice her size
she is, as I never knew her
fearless.
If As You Claim the World Is Remade by Love, Let Us Not Speak of Harbors
the wind on the water
for the water the wind
the water on the ship
for the ship the water
the ship on the wind
for the wind the ship
Listen to the poems here.
for the water the wind
the water on the ship
for the ship the water
the ship on the wind
for the wind the ship
Listen to the poems here.
Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, forthcoming 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; Agha Shahid Ali Prize for Poetry), and three chapbooks. Born in Buffalo and raised in Ohio, she now lives in Massachusetts. (Online: carolynoliver.net.)
As its title suggests, "My Grandmother in the Arms of the Boxer" responds to a photograph of my grandmother with the boxer Max Baer, a family friend.
As its title suggests, "My Grandmother in the Arms of the Boxer" responds to a photograph of my grandmother with the boxer Max Baer, a family friend.