Live Encounters Poetry & Writing February 2025
Family Almanac, poems by Brian Kirk.
Corpus Christi
The weather was always good
but you had to dress up
in your Sunday best
and parade around town
behind the priest
who held up the host
trapped in a golden cross
like it was a photo of Jesus.
All the houses had small altars
set up at their doors – carnations,
chrysanthemums – holy statues
balanced on lace covered tables.
The Children of Mary carried
a banner that said something
that made no sense
but nobody seemed to notice.
Everyone was in good form,
sang along with the hymns:
Soul of my Saviour,
Faith of our Fathers…
The First Communion girls
gave their white dresses
another outing and the boys
wore their suits one more time.
It went on for ages.
The priest told us to think
about what it all meant,
but I knew already.
It meant summer, time to
get in the sea for a swim.
Slap
When I was seven
Mrs. Smith slapped me
on the face at First Communion
practice because I looked
along the line in expectation
of the ersatz host. Her red
painted nails matched my face,
which was scarlet on two counts,
first from the slap and second
on account of the embarrassment
I felt in front of my classmates.
I couldn’t understand it.
You see, the teachers never hit me
so I didn’t know how to take it
like a man. I couldn’t shrug it off
the way the others did.
When I was twelve the bishop
slapped us lightly on the cheek
after Confirmation. Is that how
we were marked
with the sign of faith?
I held my breath, expecting
one of the tougher kids
to give him what for.
Halloween
No one could afford a proper
costume so we wore one
of our father’s railway coats
and plastic false faces.
We wandered around in the dark,
waiting to jump out at unsuspecting
passers-by, but no one ever passed
where we lived, trapped between
two one-horse towns.
We half-drowned ducking
for apples, choked on rings
secreted in barmbrack
before we headed out
into the dark again.
We had to make do
with scaring one another
and somehow we succeeded,
whipped up into a frenzy
by whispered stories
of the walking dead
or devil worshippers
who hunted down
the family cat and nailed
it to a telephone pole.
It’s not the dead
ye should be worried about,
my mother said, it’s the living.
Christmas
It should have been
the happiest time of the year
but it wasn’t.
Maybe we were trying too hard
what with the tree and the lights
and all the food and the sweets.
And nobody minded that Santy
had replaced Baby Jesus in our minds,
because we were only kids
and it was all for the kids really,
wasn’t it?
I felt sorry for the baby
in the crib in our barn of a church.
He looked cold and had to wait ages
for the wise men to appear.
I knew he was just filling in
for the real thing, like the fake
Santys in the shops who patted
your head and asked what you wanted
for Christmas. What was the point
of telling them, they couldn’t make it happen?
I cried as I queued with my mother
in Clerys Department Store,
but then I thought about Baby Jesus –
the real one – and the real Santy,
and after a while I felt better.
© Brian Kirk
Brian Kirk has published two collections with Salmon Poetry, After The Fall (2017) and Hare’s Breath (2023). His poem “Birthday” won Irish Poem of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2018. His chapbook It’s Not Me, It’s You won the Southword Fiction Chapbook Competition, published by Southword Editions in 2019. His novel Riverrun was chosen as a winner of the IWC Novel Fair 2022. www.briankirkwriter.com