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"Coward" answers the question of what there is to know by reducing life on probation in a tough neighborhood to the one hard fact the speaker actually has.

The poem rejects abstraction almost immediately, demanding that anyone with a better explanation produce it. That challenge matters because it turns cowardice away from moral insult and toward a condition lived under pressure. The closing line is bare and defensive, as if possession of this single reality is all the authority the speaker can claim.

'Coward' compresses a life under pressure into a shrug and a dare. 'What is there to know' about 'Hanging out in a tough / neighborhood / when you are on probation', the speaker asks, then challenges anyone to 'come up / with something else / that is any differant'. The flat closing line, 'Cause that is what / I've got', turns the title's accusation into a bare statement of the only reality on offer.