Parable

J. Bruce Fuller

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When I am low and thinking darkly
there often comes to mind a moment
from my childhood of two brothers
about our own age named Cain and Abel
not the boys from the Book
but the sons of a friend of my father
who invited us to stay one Christmas
when we were down on our luck again
and how after we played all afternoon
in the yard with an old foam football
and ate together boiled shrimp with rice
we sat down to watch the boys open their presents
and I didn’t realize until Abel
opened his to find the same football
two chunks of foam torn by the dogs
how none of the toys were in packages
and many I had seen earlier in their room
and how I couldn’t keep the shame
from my face as I met Cain’s eyes
and his look was a stone I have carried with me
on some days as heavy as the way
he placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder
and O God how I can’t find the lesson
in all of this O dear God of terrible mercies

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J. Bruce Fuller is a Louisiana native. His chapbooks include The Dissenter’s Ground, Lancelot, and Flood, and his poems have appeared at The Southern Review, Crab Orchard Review, McNeese Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Louisiana Literature, among others. He has received scholarships from Bread Loaf, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. He currently teaches at Sam Houston State University where he is Managing/Acquisitions Editor at Texas Review Press.

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