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My Last Day as an Altar Boy Gabriel Spera
The doors and stained-glass transoms all flung wide
and still the air won't budge. In the swelter
and chafe of my stiff cassock, I kneel beside
the altar with a fistful of bells, like a butler
ready to call the dinner guests inside.
The congregation fidgets, evenly spaced
throughout the pews, avoiding, like a mortal sin,
all contact, every mother's flushed face
fanned by an accordion-folded bulletin
sponsored by Day's bakery and Divine Grace
funeral home. And as the priest, by no means thin,
bends to kiss the altar, the crisp white linen
receives the sheen of sweat that buffs his skin,
darkening like a modern shroud of Turin.
The stale incense, the candle soot, the drone of the organ
tug my lids like window shades, my mind
drifting from the drowsy monotone and out
the doors, past the garden sprinklers reassigned
to bless the bare bodies of the undevout,
to school—because the girl I sit behind
has found the trapdoor to my fantasies
and meets me there, her speechless lips and soft
gaze stirring in me something all these "thees"
and "thous" can\'t wholly smother. He holds aloft
a pale full moon. "Take this, for this is my body.
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