“The Two Boxers Fighting Are a Single Entity”
by Elias Marsten

I tried not to steal something today,
but I’m not that young anymore.
And there’s something about my father
and the way he still believes in absolutes.
It’s the kind of conviction that one feels
when God is all at once a reality,
and there is no other kind of explanation for anything.

I was eating tofu in the kitchen, and he said:
They say that tofu raises your estrogen level.
Who said that?
They did. On the news.
Well who did the study?
I don’t know, he says. They did.
And we stood like two suits of armor.

I remember going to the park with him,
and the felled trees were dinosaur spines.
We climbed over barkcovered bones, and
later caught a foul smelling snake in the brush.
That place we hiked is lost somewhere on a map,
and like all quiet places, it will remain there still.
Perfect as any a place where a father has his son.