Blossom

Alone in Gozo’s twee old-maid
Tea rooms imagining sliced Swiss
Roll as caned arses shown in dorms,
I start my headwaiter’s spiel at

Its counterpart in Hobart Town,
The Lounging Lionel for old boys
From boarding schools, traditions formed
In convict days: “The nicknames of

Queer masters living in attached
As labels to the edibles
Precludes the need to buy and taste
Before gorged sick upon the past."

Though ‘Dirty Dick’ stuck in cake has
No place on auto trays that froth
And spill a fuss of white lace worked
By ageing poofs, the strawberry-knobbed

Iced ‘Shooter’s’ there, near ‘Tadpole’ as
Black-seeded, jellied passionfruit,
And ‘Kinky’, rooster-ridged peel bent
On tickling ‘Pansy’, a whipped frail

Meringue that’s caved in at the thought.
Five-storied ‘Big Banana Bourke’,
Split laughing at a Mike and Steve
Fits Gerald joke, is king as long

As ‘Slimy George’, done as a sponge
With sphincter figs turned inside out
To symbolise his freckle’s plight,
Is queen. The ‘Creeping Jesus’ made

In little-man, leftover dough
Climbs dates to Calvary, unless
In cruel Assynan style he counts
And throws those interfered with on

The heap. Next ‘Knackers’, lamingtons,
Tar feathered with the rough from nuts,
Who in my parents’ absence was
To witness at the laying on

Of hands the Holy Ghost’s descent
Into my waiting soul, but sucked,
Confronted by The Head and cops
With Truth in tow, a harder gun

Than any rumour-mongering boy’s
And blew the Dove to kingdom come.
Then finally there’s ‘Blossom’, me,
Hundreds and thousands strewn, nicknamed

By ‘Knacker’s’ friend ‘Tadpole’ in class
For looking out the window at
Flowers faintly lit on trees before
His voice swept over like a cloud.

© Copyright: Graeme Hetherington