dannyboy

A parish holiday at Rosebud


His cock was not
circumcised, it was the first
I had seen of the type.

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 that cock
that had not been cut in a turgid state.

I experienced a prodigal homecoming,
a rejoining with what was lost,
what would be, and what was then, a mystery.

His fat tongue was always between
his thick lips, poking out, reminiscent
of the wet, flat head of a blue tongue lizard.
He lisped, as if his glossolalia, frying, spat
when he talked. His plump need
wrapped around words, squeezed the sound
out of them, soaked them, cooked them
in the flat pans of our ears.

One evening after chocolate éclairs - we boys
always had éclairs after dinner, with weak tea
in brightly coloured plastic cups, before Father Polsen
made us kneel and give thanks to the parish
that had collected us, the laundry of poor families
too burdened to properly holiday us.

That evening, Father Polsen came to us
dressed in his black, his smelly lap
dog snarling at our white ankles, his red
finger pointed at that boy; Father hooked
the protruding tongue and led him away.

Sometime later the eleven or twelve of us,
in our separate beds, missing mothers’ kisses
that we never really received, heard the slap
of hand on buttock and I thought about
his strange cock, exposed to the priest
and his bum going red, his tears. I wondered if
that tongue was stilled, perhaps hidden at last.

He was excommunicated from our little group.
I lasted through the whole four weeks
and halfway through the next year’s trip
before I hitched a ride home with another boy's mum
and was never again asked to return.