Statistically Speaking, You Misspoke

If your fists

so honed by bar fights defending your friends

from what I could not know

had emerged from the wall

or from the dead deer’s mouths

that September afternoon

then you could have kept your promise.

But they didn’t.

And those brick-and-concrete walls

and those one thousand and forty supposed sources of harm

did not disrupt my peace that year

but it was the one

to whom you made your vow

whose face should have been pummeled in

by those well-trained hands

(August 27th, 2008)