Poem of the Week | June 22, 2020

Simon Shieh “Record”
This week’s Poem of the Week is “Record” by Simon Shieh!
Simon Shieh is a poet and educator living in Beijing. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Spittoon Literary Magazine, which translates and publishes the best new Chinese writers into English. Simon’s work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Daily, Narrative, Muzzle, Shenandoah, The Journal, and Passages North, among other publications. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Record
In violence / there is no reciprocity
like rain on soil
Shanghai / 18 years-old / Winner by knockout
The doctor called a stop
to the fight when he noticed
part of the skull exposed
next to his eyebrow—
a piece no bigger than an eye
Thailand / 19 years-old / Winner by knockout
My lower lip gushing
I drop him with an uppercut
as his queen looks on—
her lips, bright red, her mouth
curled into a smile
Brazil / 20 years-old / Loser by knockout
One night before
hoodie drenched in sweat
10lbs. in two hours
then newspapers soaked through with grease
endless slices of watermelon at the churrascaria
then his knee
shattering the bone around my left eye
the doctors called it orbital
my mistake: resting my head
on his shoulder—letting him cradle it in his arms
And to think
all those years / and not a moment of pain
Author’s Note
Every professional fighter has a “record,” an account of their wins and losses. Behind every record is a story; a story of violence objectified—hidden—in numbers. Like war statistics, a fighter’s record is an objective account of their career—calculable, containable, and communicable in a way that its content resists. This poem confronts my career as a Muay Thai fighter in its complex synthesis of violence and humanity.
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