It's a Long One

St. Philip’s Catechism

I would steal into Richard’s room to look
at the face of Mr. Sardonicus.
The face that fascinated whilst I shook.
Never took that comic to my slat’s dust,
kept the image though and can conjure it, instantly, whenever.
Not a mouth, it said, but a maw,
not smiling, it stretched to rictus
and had no lips, but did not fray.
He was holding a half-face mask, he had just moved it to one side
to reveal his everlasting, everlasting, smile for me.
I never opened the comic, letters not yet guides,
calmed myself with the grainy black-and-whites
in the middle of the history of the Third Reich
and wondered why people were moving bodies with bulldozers.

“The cat”, mother said, “has been cauterised.”
No malaprop she, but always precise in her phrasing.
I knew what she meant.
Father had killed it by shoving a red hot poker up its arse,
A level of violence not usual in most families.
He had avoided the expected scratches and bites
by punching it first in the head, but that had not killed it,
for, as mother detailed, it had still managed to defecate
once the poker was withdrawn. A slow death, then.
I saw her wince as she cleared up.
“Ex-cre-ment”, she enunciated.
“That’s one of those x words that actually starts with an e.”
That’s shit, I thought. But actually, she was right.
“E-vac-u-ate” mother murmured. We ran for it.

At five, his mother left him, and marked already with the Scottish curse,
he burned easily. He would walk to school across the fields,
better grandfather’s wrath for the clarty shin
than the poor soul smiles of distant kin and kith like neighbours.
We met on a swally following my success,
Clutha Vaults were, well, lower than expected,
but warmed by beer and buckfast I was basking
in the usual male admiration
when I smelt the bleeding and met his eyes
and we knew each other, as we must.
We breathed bone and bred together,
twins, yet dizygotic, which was just.
One for him, easy to love, wants to please;
though sweetness cloys every now and then, Easter especially.

The other, ah, hairy backed at birth: loss
nor temple whore will tame this one, he’d rather do it himself,
and so like me I’d happily provide the nails,
should any sacrifice be required.
Yet they are loved, they are protected,
and have pre-school with bright building systems
and messy play and taking turns and endless 1, 2, 3s,
phonetic ABCs, imagination free.
Meanwhile, alpha will follow omega again,
for they are split-new.
I believe in the forgiveness of sins
Tell me, Father, if we do not wound them,
I believe in the life everlasting
How will they be great, great like us?








From “The Fat Plant” by JoAnne McKay
Launch date 12th July