About Patrick Phillips

Patrick Phillips was awarded the 2005 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for his first book, Chattahoochee, and his second, Boy, was published in the VQR Poetry Series in 2008. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Poetry, Ploughshares, New England Review, and The Nation. His awards in the last year include a Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Emily Clark Balch Prize from VQR.

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Mercy

Patrick Phillips

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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

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Mercy

Patrick Phillips

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