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You are here: Home / 48 / Dear Francis,

Dear Francis,

48, Poetry by Brian Czyzyk

for Francis Bacon (1909-1992)

 

I’m sorry no one told you
           you do not have to wake
in tatters, pulling bits of window

           from your eye. Curse every man
who doesn’t know what it takes
           to be tender, to surrender

the whip and open the fist
           to favor the dexterous brush
of horsehair across corkboard.

           Those old stables are empty
now, no boys’
           boots to tongue-polish, nothing to muck

except memory. Where your father cracked
           the riding crop over
your scalp, you try to staunch

           the bleeding with lace
shreds from your mother’s dress. Booze won’t do it,
           cadmium or crucifixion

won’t wring the want from your skin.
           There’s still the farrier’s hammer
in your father’s hand, the impasto

           of blood, the tint
of bone, your mouth torn into a howl.
            How hard it is to turn from cruelty.


Brian Czyzyk is a poet from Northern Michigan. He has work published in or forthcoming from The Cincinnati Review, The Journal, Colorado Review and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Purdue University.

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Call for submissions for issue #51, as well as our poetry and micro essay contests. Learn more and submit your work here.

New Orleans Review is delighted to announce the publication of its first book, Interviews from the Edge: 50 Years of Conversations about Writing and Resistance
(Bloomsbury 2019).

Visit the Digital Archive of NOR Print Issues, 1968-2019

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