Daniel Donaghy’s poetry collection Streetfighting includes memorable characters like one-eyed Timmy, the widower Felix, and George, the basketball player—all seen through the eyes of Donaghy as a youth. When Donaghy is 12, his father abandons him and his family, only to return when Donaghy is 21. Poems like "Anchor" and "Shrapnel" convey the tensions in Donaghy’s relationship with his father. With vivid lines like, "he presses / my fingers into the shrapnel wounds / on his neck to show me just how close / I’d come to never being born," Donaghy spurns sentimentality and cuts right to the core of his bond with his father. Poem by poem, we see Donaghy as an adolescent who progresses into a street-smart youth and becomes a capable writer. His poems articulate his ability to cope by visualizing the beauty behind the outward coldness of life on Philadelphia’s Kensington Avenue neighborhood.