A friend and I attended minuscule seminary festivities at which he lied to someone’s mother about my having committed puke. He teased random matrons for their sympathy. The suspect hugs that followed were a brand of comedy to him. Kindness felt that bald to us. Into her wampum I was smeared, the fabricated burble consoled against the cosmos on her blouse, the tits my head lived through.
My friend believed he was Filipino. Mostly because he enjoyed that word. He repeated his ethnicity like it would wear off. I refused him an affection for Batman. We agreed as long as someone got hurt. Walking off our cotton candy, an aluminum scrape pursued. Clowns, a troop, heavily mascaraed, dragging baseball bats, one female being pulled in a red wagon. Neither of us was old enough to apply the balm of any serious fandom against shit like this happening when you went outside. I conferred about counting down to sprint, certain he’d abandon me to be ground further into pulp than I already was, and considered complying with their whichever motive just to earn the headline. Noting our fraught posture, they opened with an invite to watch them play a game for Christ. They were an even freakier type of dedicated. Our bladders had taken on an acoustic quality.
The pamphlets they handed out focused on Jesus bunting the devil, post-crucifixion. He slid home like a Ty Cobb cleat right in Satan’s lap. One of the less dragged clowns brandished a savior-sized wig and the implication was non-venereal Babe wins here. They scattered on the diamond, an ESPN spin on scripture. The martyrs smoked Satan from the donkey dick evening. Even the innings were an Inferno reference, climbing from hell and us yawning. We needed this lamb motherfucker struck out.
Sean Kilpatrick–raised in Detroit, published at Hobart, Boston Review, Nerve, New York Tyrant, BOMB, Fence,Columbia Poetry Review, evergreen review, Sleepingfish, Vice, Fanzine, Forklift Ohio, Spork, The Quietus, Action Yes, The Malahat Review–wrote Sucker June, out now from Lazy Fascist Press.
