draft of a poem...

[cristina]

...which I wrote during today's fight between Pacquiao and Morales. It's still fresh and I still plan to tweak it:

In Hoc Signo Vinces

Did any of the live sports commentators;
the sponsors; the winning wagerers;
the banner-makers; the headline writers;

everyone -- from the President herself
to the last drinker in the village pub --
who watched the fight, and thinks
– and rightly so! – that he’s a hero

wonder, upon seeing
his gloved fists raised in triumph,

was the fist he used to deal the knock-out blow
the same one he used to cross himself,
as he was caught on TV doing
just before the start of the crucial, final round?

[syme]

I like it. I read both irony and admiration in it. What's the story behind this fight?

I really like your use of the language. The poem flows. My only suggestion is that the transition between "his gloved fists raised in triumph," and "was the fist he used to deal the knock-out blow" is a tad awkward at first reading because we don't immediately get the sense that we're transitioning into a question posed by the spectators. Rather, it end up reading like "his gloved fists raised in triumph was the fist he used." I think you might be able to solve that by changing the comma after "triumph" into a colon.

[cristina]

THanks for the feedback, Syme! It really is a good idea to have works in progress critiqued. THere's no special story about the fight, really. It's just a FIlipino boxer defeating a Mexican boxer in Las Vegas, but it's a big thing in our country now -- I guess because it gives our national self-esteem a much needed boost, and I guess because our "hobbit-like" culture takes these fun things seriously. Everybody's raving about it; even during noontime Sunday mass, the priest asked all of us to remember it. After the last match months ago, you could hardly attend mass without the priest commenting on Manny PAcquiao making the sign of the cross before the final round.