A Twenty-eight Year Old Baker Boy
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
We go to evensong and never think
Of Tankerfield, not once. The anthems rise
More jasmine-like than incense — not the stink
Of young male flesh at stake, his searing thighs
In flames of martyrdom, a baker brought
To fire and agony because a queen
Was cramped with hate and love for Christ, love fraught
With rosaries. The carved wood altar screen
Here in this holy space would burn as well
To torture other Christian men as saints
And burn with blaze of enmity like hell
If she could torture them without constraints.
We hear child voices in Magnificat
And cannot hear his eyeballs popping, splat.
~ Phillip Whidden