“Diamond-shaped reminders from his father” by Brian Baker
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Diamond-shaped reminders from his father” by Brian Baker.
Diamond-shaped reminders from his father
By Brian Baker
The bully,
they said,
hung cats with wire.
On a string like this, too,
he danced us down streets,
running the wind, running the
safe place from out of us.
We were all new boys
he picked on,
made us build rooms for him
with doors we did not wish
to open
or even stand before.
He strung reason
(like cats)
on its own kind of wire
so that it hung right there
in front of you,
you could see it close up,
dead, between the fingers of
his fist,
could see it clearly.
And each time, it seemed,
you had to decide what
the smallest piece of you was
you could give up to him
and still remain, or be someday,
whole.
We all did this,
we all offered pride or secrets
at the very least
and sometimes
skin or blood
as well.
How these things were used by him
was unknown to us,
until maybe the steamy day
our shirts were hung
on bushes
or from our waists
and the ailment we had given
ourselves up for
lay there in welts
across the bully’s broad back,
diamond-shaped reminders from his father
of what we and others would pay for
endlessly.
Copyright © Brian Baker
Previously published in Dandelion, 1993, under the title “The Bully”.
Brian Baker (he/him) is a London, Ontario poet who began writing back in the late eighties, publishing in such literary print journals as The Lyric, Canadian Author & Bookman, the University of Windsor Review, Dandelion, and The Antigonish Review. Now, in his first re-imagining, he is back and has had work published in such online and print journals as Cathexis Northwest Press, Synaeresis : arts + poetry, Sledgehammer Lit, High Shelf Press, Roi Fainéant Press, and Vast Chasm Magazine. As well, he was the 2020 and 2022 winner of the Antler River Poetry (fka Poetry London) Contest. After a lifetime of working in social services, he is now retired and enjoying his ninth floor writing retreat.
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