FLYING OVER SONNY LISTON
by Gary Short
Sonny Liston is on all fours,
trying to rise, a flame of pain
in the center of his head.
The crowd noise blurs,
then distances, as though he is shut
in a room by himself.
In his face there is silence.
His skin glistens with sweat,
& the glare & flurry of camera flashes
are far-away lights in his eyes.
Cassius Clay thin & sharp, stands
above him, arms in a recited W.
The airplane rises over the cemetery
where Liston is buried
next to the runway at McCarran Airport.
What I recall is his bad press--
how he learned to box in prison,
how he hung out with the worst people.
His violence & his size,
a film clip of him
sullenly jumping rope
to a record of "Night Train."
A woman in a pink blouse sits next to me.
Her fingers try to memorize a thick crucifix
on a chain around her neck.
She's nervous. But from this safe distance,
looking out the oval window
& beyond the wing, I see the cross
of the airplane shadowing grave sites.
A boxer knows momentum
can suddenly shift. One blow
changes everything.
The plane lifts. Closing my eyes, I hear
the referee's eight-count, the knockout signaled.
Liston is out of time & still on his knees,
suffering & silent, "Inarticulate
in the way we all are," James Baldwin wrote,
"when more has happened to us
than we know how to express."
In eight seconds an aircraft can bank into
& fly through fists of clouds
above the city of Las Vegas
& the grave of Sonny Liston.
He died alone in a motel room.
His life was nothing like mine,
& so we share a solitariness,
like the passengers on this plane who rise
or fall together
& individually, each with defeats.
The fight for survival is the fight.
From the book Flying Over Sonny Liston by Gary Short (University of Nevada Press, $10).
Winner of the 1996 Western States Book Award for Poetry.
