TRAGIC Poem: The Rutting, by Joseph Garrison

I can remember it
like it was yesterday.
The day I had to
split my fathers’ face.

Dinner was just that
in our family.
It wasn’t a ceremony,
it was just the pleasure,
of eating food.
We never
said Grace.

We had just sat down to eat
when the phone rang.
It was an old rotary phone,
an ancient relic nowadays.

I got up and answered it,
on the other end
was a high school friend,
who must have been forgettable
because I can’t remember who it was,
or maybe it’s what happened next
that blotted it from my memory;
“Get off the fucking phone”,
my stepfather yelled.

He was a large man.
His arms were the size of some mens legs.
His hands were hard, rough,
and stained with motor oil,
and when he closed them,
they were like boulders.
His neck was red from the sun,
and the skin,
thick and coarse
like leather.

“I got to get off the phone,
my Dad is trippin” I said,
then I hung it up.
I guess this angered him,
because he jumped up from the table
and came into the room I was in.
Then he squared off with me.

I was a skinny,
and innocent teen,
I was not yet the hard,
jaded man that I would
unwittingly become,
very soon.
He pushed me,
I pushed back.
That’s when he struck me,
with a closed fist.
I don’t remember it hurting,
but when your biological father
dies from a heroin overdose,
when you’re eleven,
not much else after that,
is truly painful.

When he struck me,
I retaliated without hesitation.
One swift blow to his face.
Then the mountain of a man,
I had admired for years,
ran into the hall,
and I followed.
His back was against the wall,
when I continued to strike,
until I felt something wet.
I looked at my hand,
and saw blood.

You see,
my hands aren’t large clubs
of stone like his.
They are the hands of an artist,
a lover,
a writer,
delicate and agile,
and when thrown with force,
will split flesh.

I looked up from my blood-splattered hand
and the look on his face,
is still eternally etched in my mind.
His eyes were large,
and on his cheek,
a single, small red slit,
like an open,
gaping mouth.

I took a step back,
he turned and darted into the living room,
and as he did I pushed him and yelled,
“Don’t you ever hit me again.”
He tripped over a chair,
falling against a window curtain,
dousing it with blood.
That was about the time my mother said,
“We are going to take you to get stitches,
then you’re getting the fuck out of here.”

That event led to their divorce,
and she resents me for it to this day,
but at least now,
when I’m eating dinner,
and the phone rings,
I can talk as long
as I want.

3/27/24