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A parish holiday at Rosebud
A parish holiday at Rosebud
I remember three things about the boy.
His not circumcised cock, it
was the first I had seen of the type.
Its strangeness haunted my seven-year old corridors –
I remember some time later I dreamt
of Kathleen O’Neil, her naked breasts, ocean wet,
yet, she wore orange jocks
that bulged and in the dream
I sunk my hand beneath the taut cotton
and found again that cock that had not been cut,
it was, in the dream state, a prodigal homecoming,
a rejoining with what was lost and what would be.
Second, his fat tongue was always
between his thick lips, poking out
like the wet, flat head of a blue tongue.
He lisped, as if the tongue might
have been lizard-split, and spat when he talked,
especially when excited. He was often excited,
his little green eyes blazing, his fat tongue
wrapped around words, squeezing
the sound out of them, soaking them,
cooking them in our ears.
The third thing was one evening after chocolate éclairs;
we boys always had éclairs after dinner,
with weak tea in brightly coloured plastic cups,
before Father Polsen would make us kneel
and give thanks to the parish that had collected us,
the laundry of families too burdened
to holiday us properly.
This evening Father Polsen came to us
dressed in his black, his smelly lap
dog snarling at our white ankles
and his red finger pointed at that boy
and he, as if hooked
by that protruding tongue, was led away.
Sometime later the eleven or twelve of us,
as we lay in our separate beds, missing mothers’ kisses
that we never really received anyway,
heard the sound of hand on buttock
and I thought about his strange cock, exposed
to the priest
and his bum going red,
his tears,
that tongue stilled,
perhaps hidden at last.
I did not see him again.
He was excommunicated from our little group.
I lasted through the whole four weeks
and halfway through the next year’s trip
before I, too, was sent home.
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