Name Calling

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The Codman Estate
Harvard, MA

Name Calling

Part of our existence lies in the feelings of those near us. 

This is why the experience of someone who has lived for days

during which man was merely a thing in the eyes of man

is non-human.

                                Primo Levi

                                If This Is Man

When I think about you and the trouble we caused
the spot on the back of my head heats up, announcing

its misconduct, it spikes like a fever,

it flushes me out of the bushes where I’ve kept

that protecting you hand-in-hand memory safe,

safe, as a time capsule and sealed.  Imagine it 

coming undone like a rash spreading up  your neck,

coiling from the breast because that’s where it all

starts for me, behind the flabby fat, behind

the scratched at bone (but scratched at

from behind the rib wall) because it’s muscle we got

to burn through, and tendon.  And there's as much

spilled blood as we can spill and step by until we’re

all of us numbed by it and made dumb.  But this

four inch red tear-drop that looks like I’ve been

burned is what’s left, and it’s lingers

the way a scar does, a long time after

the attack.  And scars itch remember, they

crave to be got after with teeth sometimes

and nails.  And it all gets broken into and open

and by then it’s beyond being soothed.

Like trying to talk you down but you don’t talk back

all these years later and the reason is

mysterious to me and deficient, and choked

like that time you grabbed her (who is just between

you and me, see, I can keep a secret) and before

you can get a good hold of her throat

you broke your hold, or she did, or I did,

the scenarios change every time I try

to remember, but whatever happened after you
were provoked, after you slumped against the wall:
you began to call yourself names, names you’d been called

since you were small and since even before

you knew the purpose of words:  little

bastard, little prick, little son of a whore.  And

though it’s the last one you squeeze and squeeze

through your teeth I see you say it

tenderly, like a stunned thing you’re about

to shoot in the head, a horse maybe or a favorite

dog, sick to the bone and completely calm

but blushing, like me, blushing reverence, under your spell.