Shadow Boxer

Written with a sense of urgency, Shadow Boxer is an intense, meditative, form-conscious collection of poems by a fighter who has "lived and learned," as notes award-winning author Matthew Zapruder on the back cover. In 18 poems, it delineates the author's personal fitness journey, his transformation from "skinny-fat underdog" to "super welterweight live dog." The speaker in this book is a literal and figurative shadow boxer, a first-generation Mexican American who fights not for but with his life, as remarks Jill Alexander Essbaum, New York Times best-selling author of Hausfrau. In this debut, Cossio fights with his "sub"/substitute self to become a tenured teacher, fights to earn the nickname "Professor," to be "heard as well as seen," and seen as fit to be a father. These fight-poems will capture a reading audience's imagination by showcasing how one can fight for their life, "an American dream," by fighting for sport and with an underlying message that through drive, discipline, and dedication one can overcome their shadow self to reinvent themself on any stage of the world and at any stage in life.