THE BEATING

THE BEATING

THE BEATING

What you brought home to our mother no longer resembled
a human face – every follicle magnified
among the kick-marks, a Galapagos of kick-marks;
one half of your head swollen to twice the size

of the other, like something trying to get out,
something misshaping the cranium from the inside;
the upper heavyweight lip split open
like a plum into halves – the slit of the eye glimmering

under the monstrous lid. She laid out your body
and placed her hands into the water of the bowl.
Her name for you, she said, had stuck in her throat
like a wishbone that wouldn’t go down and wouldn’t come out,

and your legs so hairy, obdurate and bowed
would have to be shaved, she said, shaving smooth inroads
into the crop-roots of your body hair. That noise.
She removed the rags of your vest, like the hands

attending the holy body – she ploughed you through
with wild protective love, and you lay there,
saved. She raised your arms to wash them, and vowed
to go out into the world, that moment, to find the man

who’d pummelled and kicked you to this shape
and break him in two like the laws of forgiveness
and have him hobble and limp to the left
as her lumpen darling limped to the right:

and she was the snarl amplified at such a distance from
your mouth, and it was a snarl for a snarl.
It was furious steel capped boot for steel capped boot,
you might say. It was meat for meat.