BODY IMAGE Poem: To Be Begotten, by Drury Murphy

My father’s eyes are greener than mine
Without his bright red cheeks to frame them
His hair is curlier and redder
And yet I find my own growing curlier with age
In the back, at the very base of my skull
Where my anger comes boiling up from

I avoid mirrors more often than not
I see him there and only there
His thin, tight lips looking back at me
The angry furrow in his eyebrows
His stout figure
Short, curving in only at the waist slighting
Only to disappear in the wideness of his legs
More strength in his frame than I will ever have to show for it

And sometimes, I hear his humor in my voice
When the joke grows too dark
And I feel the cruelty that burns under my skin
Burning him that pinkish red color

He’d tell me that was God’s doing
God’s way of showing me where I came from
But if that’s God’s doing,
I’d assume he did it knowing
That some fathers have nothing more to give than what they are
So instead, God gave me all of mine
Everything that my father is or ever could have been
To sit in my bones
To drive the ache in my body
Because he knew it was all some men can bare to give

If you asked me, though,
The spawn, the most human half of him,
I’d tell you it was the son
The knower of this agony
Of having a father
That knows only violence for you
That’s more you than you are