The Sand Hill Review http://www.sandhillreview.org 2009
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Almost Men The boys career into the waves, slug and shove each other, the tail end of childhood squeaking out in the sudden high notes that crack their deep voices. Soft round faces, strapping bodies flushed, half naked in the summer fog, wolf pups, nipping their brothers’ necks. The one with the hairiest chest prances at the water’s edge, barking orders at his mates. The runt shies away, shivers and giggles, hands flattened into armpits. My father, at that age, spent his summers shouldering hunks of butchered cow into the freezers at the packing plant. How could he play when he had to buy In the stockyards he slogged through blood. A red-toothed hunger haunted the cramped flat. Forced to strip off youth too soon he wore adulthood like a stiff and itchy pelt he never learned how to shed. Pat
Zylius |
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