Pappy says boyhood is a thing too long lasting

and rightly named, on account of its false protection. Boyhood covers


your ass by stuffing wadded socks in your rear pockets

so the switch hurts less, swung with all the piss


and Bible Pappy could muster. Pappy says no backtalk,

says each man has got to plow their own


pasture to create some place respectable

where they can cart around their hurt like thick hunks

of stone.


This is how things are to be done. How a man is to be made: by pushing

logs that fall from the backs of trucks into the ditch across the road and

whipping the mutt that follows you to the mailbox each day


until it feels thankful and a little scared to even be alive.