Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
Daniel Lawless: The Paten
— from Holy Instruments
Imagine a lidless Silent Butler, or somebody’s grandmother’s fancy candy dish—this polished bronze plate with a rich mahogany handle “employed to catch the tiniest precious crumbs of the Body of Christ,” according to Learning to Serve. Below, the scuffed marble communion rail. Above, long rows of mouths gaped, candlelight struck their gold fillings. O, parched tongues! O, Clearasil and ear wax, quivering chin hairs! Sometimes, for a joke, you jabbed your friends in the neck with it, friends that are dead now. And once, in the dim sacristy, vain Father R— regarding his graying beard in the paten like a mirror; then in the rectory twice more, moaning as he caressed my nape…
Copyright 2024 Daniel Lawless. From I Tell You This Now (Červená Barva Press, 2024).
Daniel Lawless is the author of The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With. He is the founder and editor of Plume: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry.
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
My hair stands on end.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The poem is subtly terrifying.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ugliness under the ritual. Thank you. The way this poem opens up is terrifying.
LikeLike
I would like to second Margo Berdeshevsky. How much, how terrifyingly much the church hides.Still.
LikeLiked by 1 person
vivid & terrifying
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, abuse of children is hidden in the rituals of normality.
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
Powerful and sad, with the well placed ellipsis at the end pointing to future evils.
I’m struck by how the poem begins with a graphic description of the paten and its context in a ritual of salvation, then turns it into the toy weapon, aimed playfully at the the necks of the youthful altar boy’s friends; but finally the bronzed paten becomes a trigger for the priest’s ritual of abusive grooming of the unlucky boy, (also via his neck). Shudder…
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks, Jim. The progression of rituals from sacred to playful to abusive builds a scaffold of terror.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A scaffold of terror would make a good title for a poem about all sorts of things these days.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A wonderful poem. Glad to read it again!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Quite a poem!
I always note their actions with the cup of blessing, the washing, white cloth at last, folded, laid across the opening keeping something out or in?
I they hadn’t mystery, they’d have nothing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
oh, terrifying, in the slow ascent of detail(s) to the ugly truth mirrored in the server… deep bow for the honesty of this poem and its quiet accusation of church and what it hides.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it’s a powerful poem.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person