Bully

Fred Shaw

Although it was my sister
who took the training wheels
off my Schwinn, and Sex Ed came
from a spongy copy of Penthouse
stashed in the woods,
it was Dad who first taught me
to ball a fist, keep the thumb outside,
and aim for the nose.

He wasn’t thinking of the punches
I’d later land on Darrell’s round head
and Kool-Aid stained mouth.
Year after year, I’d dish out
the same pounding
each time he visited his Aunt,
our one-sided backyard brawls
becoming less
about his weak Wiffle-ball play,
than my need for our game to end in his cries.

This is before I began
to stare at the handicapped
or whipped Mom with a wire-hanger,
before I stoned stray cats,
and mistook cruelty for honesty
when I asked my first girlfriend if the rumors
of her being a whore were true.

To say that I once preyed on the weak
as if it were a rite of passage,
would be to wonder if Darrell still remembers
how I taught him to spit blood,
and swear at the top of his lungs,
learning at my hands
how to give with all he had.