Altar Boy
In black cassock & white cotta I brought the flame & held the Word holy & lonely like you, Father McCarthy your pockmarked cheeks & cheery homilies the way you’d intone Kevin as if assuring me you knew my lack & need to serve your mass ready your wine & water to kneel beside the bells & be careless for nothing on your altar You were early 30s but severe hair in place & parted a gold signet on your right hand to clink against the chalice lifted above our faces all black except yours then wiped clean with a kerchief I’d laid out starched & white After I took a saint’s name at Confirmation I was done with Catechism & started the bleak stations of middle school those sorrowful stations I stopped serving came by occasionally for confession for midnight mass at Christmas when the older boys carried your train as you swung the thurible of frankincense blessing the old ones clutching their beads & crossing themselves while the young ones like me fought for relevance in the pews I remember the tie-dye chasuble of your last Easter its burnt orange & brown silk flooding the aisle as you stepped from the altar to tell us the marvel of resurrection & life of the world to come Two years into Whitney’s voice the mixtapes of sophomore year when I grew out my flat top & kissed a senior when you were stabbed five times, Father through your throat some clear down to the spinal bone but you weren’t dead so he wrapped it in electrical cord & pulled both ends until he was tired & this took two tries & a rest in between but you weren’t dead yet & I was probably watching a rerun of The Cosby Show or sorting out my algebra just a bus ride away from where he poured salt into your eyes & into your throat on his eighth night there that was after the claw hammer into your sandy brown hair the night before he was to leave but December is a cold month even in New Orleans & Marcus Hamilton was a muscular man, Father Put his hands on me every time I got near him he testified neither of you had a chance