I got a fist-sized heart made for backseat brawls, I got a broken-nosed love—a boxer, a gangster, gunning in the streets—I got a glass-jaw Johnny, he hurts me, he holds me, oh hold me, baby, you better hold me back—I’ve been waiting for this fight all night, the purple bruise of your mouth, its bite, the backhand smudge that tries to wipe me from your lips. I got a cauliflower ear, it hears the drumbeat of this love, the tattoo of it marching in the street, its stomping feet, its jackboots hammer the concrete outside your house, wakes the neighborhood at five am, got all the babies cryin’—their mothers throw cold water out the windows, their fathers threaten violence—I got a fist-sized heart, it swings, it connects. I got a knuckle sandwich for the family upstairs. A safecracking love, a love that blows up in your face, sweating dynamite, unstable, it could go off at any second, I got an ungentle love! A love that jimmies open windows, steals cars and joyrides, moons the passersby, a love that’s sticking out its tongue—bully love, broken love, loud love, bad love, ten pounds of love squirting out of a five-pound bag, messy love. Heavyweight love, prizefighting love, KO-ing all comers with my fist-sized heart.

JENNIFER MALONEY writes poetry and short fiction. Find her work in ImageOutWrite volumes 7&8, in SHIFT: A Publication of MTSU Write, and forthcoming in the November/December 2023 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine. Jennifer is the co-editor of the poetry anthology Moving Images: Poetry Inspired by Film (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2021) and the author of Evidence of Fire, Poems and Stories (ClareSongbirds Publishing, 2023).