“Making a Fist” by Naomi Shihab Nye begins with an epigraph from the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges: “We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men” (Epigraph). Though the epigraph appears morbid, the quotation addresses the inevitability of death, an action that ties together all of humanity. It is about connection through mortality and turns a morose subject into one of community.

The poem begins with the speaker, who the reader can assume to be Nye, driving “on the road north of Tampico” (Line 1); Tampico is a city in northeastern Mexico. The speaker describes how for “the first time” (Line 1) she feels “the life sliding out of [her]” (Line 2), meaning this is the first time she ever felt she was dying. She describes the feeling as a “drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear” (Line 3). The line is a metaphor, comparing the speaker’s life to a drum. The drumming symbolizes the beating of the speaker’s heart, or her breath, and how she is becoming disconnected with the rhythm of life within her.

The speaker explains she is “seven” (Line 4) and “lay[ing] in the car” (Line 4).