LOGIC OF BRAWL
by Crystal Valentine
The rules of a fight, according to my mother,
are simple: if they hit you, you hit them
back—preferably harder, preferably with
enough force to white-flag an apology
and if not an apology, then at least a tooth,
preferably the canine—the root sword,
the blood winner—and if the canine is too stubborn,
too spoiled by the cocky hold of gum and jaw
then, of course, at that point with your elbow
or your knee or just the will of her good grace
you make them surrender their entire mouth,
restructure their entire face; this is only fair
she tells me, this logic of brawl, this marriage
of bone to concrete, and I know my mother,
the once black-eyed referee, a red flag
soaking in her husband’s violence,
I know how clever a woman must be to make a man
think he’s won and it’s not that she doesn’t know how to mother
me away from a fight, it’s just with her timeline of scars,
she's become too skilled at what she does
and no, running is not what she does and if I can count
on my mother for anything, it is to land the softest
blow which is why I can’t explain that time
with my brother and his hand that broke
into a fist, and his fist that broke me—made pain
seep into my arm like sap and perhaps the throb
was just the simple acknowledgment of blood
recognizing blood and I wish my mother,
my certain coach, could at least stick to the rules
broken by her little boy—the man who splits
into the image of his father, too spoiled by the cock
of gun and familial law and no, of course I couldn’t
take him, just like how she couldn’t run
away from her husband—but goddamnit I did not
want an apology, I wanted to gut the canine, cleaver
straight through him, finally, finally win the fight.
Crystal Valentine is a Black, queer woman from the Bronx. She is a Callaloo fellow, a former NYC Youth Poet Laureate, and a two-time winner of the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic Anthology (Haymarket Books),TriQuarterly Magazine, Winter Tangerine and elsewhere. She received an MFA from New York University and is the current festival manager for the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.