Monday poem

This is from an anthology I received as a Christmas gift, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time. This is my favorite so far from it:

Mercy

Like two wrestlers etched
around some ancient urn

we’d lace our hands,
then wrench

each other’s wrists back
until the muscles ached

and the tendons burned,
and one brother

or the other grunted Mercy —
a game we played

so many times
I finally taught my sons,

not knowing what it was,
until too late, I’d done:

when the oldest rose
like my brother’s ghost,

grappling the little
ghost I was at ten —

who cried out Mercy!
in my own voice Mercy!

as I watched from deep
inside my father’s skin.

Patrick Phillips

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