Concerning the Spared Rod

  When he was younger Kevin once made a mistake and thoughtlessly swore. He couldn’t remember if it were an accident or just something he’d picked up on the street, repeated in a child’s mindless parroting. It didn’t really matter: his father’s retribution was swift. Blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven.
  And Kevin was stretched, shirtless, between the doorposts, and his father read from Isaiah in the Bible over the tumult of Kevin’s tears and wails for forgiveness, for mercy.
  “By His stripes are we healed.”
  By Kevin’s stripes the child is redeemed before his God, and by a brown leather belt are those stripes carved like a painter flinging his brush at the canvas. Above his head, a crucifix looking on with sorrow. Below, welts blossoming on the canvas like red roses, or the thin trickle of blood licking the needle in the crook of the elbow, and the brief grimace of morphine and vein in coitus. Spare the rod, condemn the child.