If you’ve ever been struck in the liver by someone who knows what they’re doing, this poem will resonate with you. Especially if the person who hit you was a friend. If you’ve never had this experience, I hope this gives you a taste.

Ode to the Friendly Liver Shot

Prepared for up high but the fist comes low,
A blur that slides beneath my raised elbow.

The power behind that blind instrument:
Two hundred twenty pounds of Russian immigrant.

My fear is absent but my flesh betrays.
It drops, then groans, a pantomime of praise.

In fury, my liver acts as a judge
And nurses a painful, quick little grudge.

What was dormant erupts with fire and flame
Then oozes and spreads with a drunken aim.

Did something inside split, rupture, or break?
Would this last forever? My insides quake.

Instinct cries out at dark danger unknown,
“Flee to a hole! Cover me with mountain stone!”

Death. I flee death. It would come to devour
My crippled mass. It roars in its power.

But instinct dies first and dissolves. The pain
leaves as if flowing down an unclogged drain.

And I stand up slowly, no longer deranged.
Thirty seconds have passed. Nothing has changed.

So I look at my foe, coming out of my trance.
We smile, touch gloves, and improvise another dance.