The blotchy neck belongs to Father O’xxxxx. 

I slip the amice over his snow raked pate. 

Through the vestry windows 

Epiphany’s light is so brittle it might break  

in both hands or dissolve in gold on the tongue.  

He bends still lower for the alb. 

The smell of man, not of priest. 

Old Spice with notes of liver and rectory dust. 

He crosses the stole himself, tightens the cinsure, 

opening his great white wings for the chasuble,  

woven the ceaseless green of a boy’s last summer. 

He blesses me and makes the sign of the cross  

before taking a key to the safe in the wall 

which guards the sacraments: 

a pack of Vatican wafers, a bottle of Tio Pepe, 

a chalice knuckled with cold silver. 

From centuries past, a cork squeaks. 

He glugs a taster of the blood 

Just to check Our Lord is still with us he explains. 

I too sense the other male presence in the room. 

The priest sits in the chair with a cruciform back  

as I recite the lesser saints he set for homework. 

Frumentius    Endellion     Servatius  

Ansanus        Castulus        Cunibert 

Felicula       Gummarus      Pudens 

To spur my memory, I associate each name  

with a different part of the vulva 

I found steel engraved in a Gray’s Anatomy, 

scruffy haired and choir mouthed  

as if singing a canticle to Jesus at Christmas. 

I believe this must be sinful because there is no 

Saint Clitoris or Saint Labia of Carthage. 

Already I know better than to ask. 

The church has a saint for everything except altar boys, 

he reads me with a smirk and another holy swig 

which leaves just the two of us 

as faith melts like slush in a gutter  

and bells peal for the Sacred Feast of the Baptism.