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What I Remember About Scott

Sonya Yelich


I can't remember why I didn't call – but then I can't
remember the arrangement of freckles over his face –
the encyclopedia of his smile, the yellowing of his teeth.
It would be difficult to conjure a lover whose breath was
more indecent & his fingers wide with the task of it. At Mass –
his family sang out for his small putty soul.
Himself of the party type & the loose bourbon of ports
of seas of datelines where he flew out of the antipodes like
The One Time Record Shop Worker he was.

And here are the candles in the brick church where I have
never seen so many colt suits pressed & secondhand
who shine from the nylon crotch of hire suit companies – worn
over & over by graduates, ball goers, bony virgins locked in white shirts.
And Jesus would be impressed if his clothes had been rented out –
his cloth – the thorns – the centerpiece – the costume change.
The hiring of nails. And today the pews are adorned with boys
whose jerky cocks fall low and their loose teardrops stuff the floor.

And this is how mourning goes. We are all nobody. We are guests
before the casket. We are dressed as if we will be unnoticed behind
the dull car who has been washed behind the funeral parlour.
We will see the lilies and intuit the pornographic howls from his mother
whose tongue is grief struck. And inside the wallet-mouth of the brick
Church we will play out our own stories of this teen who took the bus
to Mexico – who got sliced in half – whose nose broke over the seat in front.
I was 17. And we had taken a tent. I lay across the earth while he kissed me
with worship & a stabbing motion. And I remember his lisp. Now this.

 


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