Doug Fritock

When we read The Merchant of Venice

in tenth grade English, just a bunch

of disinterested fifteen-year-olds

restless at our desks while Ms. Townley

expounded on the evils of usury,

I thought Shylock’s demand

for a pound of Antonio’s flesh

was just hyperbole, or metaphor,

some sort of literary device employed

by Shakespeare to demonstrate

the wickedness of exorbitant interest.


But decades later, watching my father’s cancer,

ruthless as a loan shark, exact pound

after pound of flesh from his ruined body,

as if he had accrued a debt

he was no longer able to pay,

I am reminded that according

to Dante usurers are condemned

to the inner ring of the seventh circle

of Hell for the sin of unscrupulous gain.

I guess that’s where tumors reside as well,

once they’ve collected what’s theirs.