By JD Clapp
He looks at the snaggle tooth scar on the back of his hand, forty years jack-o-lantern rotted, running across his knuckles down his fuck you and ring fingers – compliments of the old man dying in that bed. Instantly, he’s back to the morning. Daddy mean-drunk on whisky, his teapot boiling over on his dog shit job, nagging wife, and girly-boy son. Storm fallen oak branch on the two-track, blocking deer camp and real men, his pop slurs instructions, “go clear the road boy and hand me a beer.” Dad says, “man-up son if that’s what you are and if you’re really mine, and get your sorry ass cutting with that damn bowsaw, and don’t cry when the steel fangs hang-up and your steady handgrip slips.” Sure enough, that fucker bites him and blood spurts out slow like grandaddy’s piss. And Dad laughing slurs, “you dumb-shit I warned ya didn’t I? Don’t be a pussy and start crying, keep on cutting, don’t be a bitch.” Then his young mind clears, he’s thinking his blood is my blood and he ain’t worth a shit. So, he keeps methodically cutting, with his dad yelling, “at a boy…my boy… show me some grit.” The work done, his blood-soaked camo, a clear road to deer camp, his long life ahead. The old man pours them both whisky then a splash on his cuts. Dad says, “patch it up boy with your tampon and duct tape,” hands him a beer, and says “might make a man of you yet.” Now, all these years later, back in the sick room, as he waits for beeps fading, knowing he’ll heal the scars of his manhood when he pisses on the old man’s grave.
JD Clapp is based in San Diego, CA. His poems have appeared in Roi Fainéant Press, Poverty House, Punk Noir, Revolution John, Maya’s Micros/The Closed Eye Opened, and the Remembering Charles Bukowski Anthology (Moonstone, 2023).
