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Prayer of the Backhanded

By Jericho Brown

Not the palm, not the pear tree
Switch, not the broomstick,
Nor the closet extension
Cord, not his braided belt, but God,
Bless the back of my daddy’s hand
Which, holding nothing tightly
Against me and not wrapped
In leather, eliminated the air
Between itself and my cheek.
Make full this dimpled cheek
Unworthy of its unfisted print
And forgive my forgetting
The love of a hand
Hungry for reflex, a hand that took
No thought of its target
Like hail from a blind sky,
Involuntary, fast, but brutal
In its bruising. Father, I bear the bridge
Of what might have been
A broken nose. I lift to you
What was a busted lip. Bless
The boy who believes
His best beatings lack
Intention, the mark of the beast.
Bring back to life the son
Who glories in the sin
Of immediacy, calling it love.
God, save the man whose arm
Like an angel’s invisible wing
May fly backward in fury
Whether or not his son stands near.
Help me hold in place my blazing jaw
As I think to say, excuse me.
Added: Monday, June 30, 2014  /  From "Please" (New Issues Press 2008). Used with permission.
Jericho Brown

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  His poems have appeared in The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Poetry magazine, TIME magazine, and The Best American Poetry anthology. His first book, Please (New Issues, 2008), won the American Book Award.  His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon, 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.  He serves as poetry editor for The Believer.  He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.

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