Narrative: Ali

a poem in twelve rounds 1. My head so big they had to pry me out. I’m sorry Bird (is what I call my mother). Cassius Marcellus Clay, Muhammad Ali; you can say my name in any language, any continent: Ali. 2. Two photographs of Emmett Till, born my year, on my birthday. One, he’s smiling, happy, and the other one is after. His mother did the bold thing, kept the casket open, made the thousands look upon his bulging eyes, his twisted neck, her lynched black boy. I couldn’t sleep for thinking, Emmett Till. One day I went Down to the train tracks, found some iron shoe-shine rests and planted them between the ties and waited for a train to come, and watched the train derail, and ran, and after that I slept at night. 3. I need to train around people, hear them talk, talk back. I need to hear the traffic, see people in the barbershop, people getting shoe shines, talking, hear them talk, talk back. 4. Bottom line: Olympic gold can’t buy a black man a Louisville hamburger in nineteen-sixty. Wasn’t even real gold. I watched the river drag the ribbon down, red, white, and blue. 5. Laying on the bed, praying for a wife, in walk Sonji Roi. Pretty little shape. Do you like chop suey? Can I wash your hair underneath that wig? Lay on the bed, Girl. Lie with me. Shake to the east, to the north, south, west— but remember, remember, I need a Muslim wife. So Quit using lipstick. Quit your boogaloo. Cover up your knees like a Muslim wife, religion, religion, a Muslim wife. Eleven months with Sonji, first woman I loved. 6. There’s not too many days that pass that I don’t think of how it started, but I know no Great White Hope can beat a true black champ. Jerry Quarry could have been a movie star, a millionaire, a senator, a president— he only had to do one thing, is whip me, but he can’t. 7. Dressing-Room Visitor He opened up his shirt: “KKK” cut in his chest. He dropped his trousers: latticed scars where testicles should be, His face bewildered, frozen in the Alabama woods that night in 1966 when they left him for dead, his testicles in a Dixie cup. You a warning, they told him, to smart-mouth, sassy-acting niggers, meaning niggers still alive, meaning any nigger, meaning niggers like me. 8. Training Unsweetened grapefruit juice will melt my stomach down. Don’t drive if you can walk, don’t walk if you can run. I add a mile each day and run in eight-pound boots. My knuckles sometimes burst the glove. I let dead skin build up, and then I peel it, let it scar, so I don’t bleed as much. My bones absorb the shock. I train in three-minute spurts, like rounds: three rounds big bag, three speed bag, three jump rope, one- minute breaks, no more, no less. Am I too old? Eat only kosher meat. Eat cabbage, carrots, beets, and watch the weight come down: two-thirty, two-twenty, two-ten, two-oh-nine. 9. Will I go like Kid Paret, a fractured skull, a ten-day sleep, dreaming alligators, pork chops, saxophones, slow grinds, funk, fishbowls, lightbulbs, bats, typewriters, tuning forks, funk clocks, red rubber ball, what you see in that lifetime knockout minute on the cusp? You could be let go, you could be snatched back. 10. Rumble in the Jungle Ali boma ye, Ali boma ye,