The Promise by David Spicer

THE PROMISE

Boy, you’re tailor-made for prison, 
my father said when I was ten and stole 
a candy bar. I challenged the comment 
every time I showed him straight A’s 

in English. He said, Too bad your 
grades stink in science. I assembled 
model cars, painted them candy-apple 
colors. He said, Those toys are for babies. 

You get high from that glue? I wondered
why he treated me that way, whether he 
hated himself and me. He whipped 
me often with his studded leather belt. 

I asked him why. To make you a man. 
I said, Did your father beat you worse 
than you beat me? He said, Shut your 
trap. I lingered for decades as he played

catch with my nephews, offered them gifts 
I never received. You look like a monkey 
fucking a football, he said when I fixed flats 
at his station. One November I refused 

to listen any longer. We spent that last 
election day debating. Who was the better 
man?  Win or lose, I said, Dukakis, but I 
was wrong. My father gloated. We argued

like two lousy lawyers with no facts, 
called each other fool, son of a bitch, 
motherfucker. He boomed, LEAVE! 
I slammed the door to smother his voice.
                             
My girlfriend said, Don’t be a prodigal.
I wasn’t. If I relented, he’d welcome me back. 
I’d have no future, a cynic repeating 
his mistakes. But I wanted light, promised

myself never to see him again. He thought 
I’d crawl back, head bowed, lick the hardwood 
so Daddy’d forgive. When I didn’t, he asked 
if I’d take $1000 to make amends. I hung up, 

yelled, Leave me alone. He tried to hire 
a mechanic to jump me. The man laughed. 
A priest called. Reconcile with your dad.
I epiphanied, No, that my father wanted

to twist his father’s hate knife into me 
a last time. One forgiving day I drove 
to his house. Tossing a baseball to his 
sister’s boy, he called my cousin Son.

I decided—recalling the one time he told 
me, I love you—not to return, said, 
He’ll never hurt me again, and sent a note: 
We’re gasoline and matches. Goodbye.

Six months later I learned he died in vomit,
consumed with bile. Sometimes I pass 
his empty yard and remember him saying,
A real man never breaks a promise. ​



David Spicer is a former medical journal proofreader. He has published poems in Santa Clara Review, Synaeresis, Chiron Review, Remington Review, unbroken, Third Wednesday, CircleStreet, The Bookends Review, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Yellow Mama, The Midnight Boutique, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart once, he is author of one full-length poetry collection, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press) and six chapbooks, the latest of which is Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). His new full-length collection of poems, Waiting for the Needle Rain, is forthcoming from Hekate Publishing. His website is www.davidspicer76.com