Confession

I loved the suspense,
Saturdays, waiting on pews
with ancient hunch-backed women

whispering into their fists.
I loved stepping inside the confessional,
an oaken phone booth

smelling of Pine-Sol, paneling,
kneelers lush as wine.
I could close the door to a silence

absolute, like going
deaf and blind at once,
sink to my knees in its velvet abyss.

Featured in Best Catholic Writing 2007 "Confession" is from Michael Mack's forthcoming work, Kingdom of Busted Furniture.

Thwack! A panel slides back.
I see through a screen a hulking shadow, our priest
backlit by a dim light, tipping his hairy ear.

His face just a silhouette,
I hear his breath, sighs and soft growls
as he nods, urges me on.

Yes child?

Mouth to the screen I murmur
Bless me father for I have sinned,
unsure what sin is, or why it concerns me,

knowing only by rote:
mortal sin is a deadly sin,
venial sin a lesser sin.

Bless me father, I lied three times, stole two times, disobeyed four times…

which is what I’d said the week before,
the week before that,
repeating the very example from catechism,

I lied three times, stole two times…
till the week he swiveled and barked
What! Again!?

It stung, the rubber band
snap of his voice, and something inside me
squirmed like a lizard.

Guilt. Guilt,
the mark of sin, and I the sinner
twisting in its net.

I left the church head down.
As Daddy drove me home
I puffed on my window till it fogged,

doodled cartoon crosses, thinking
what I might say next Saturday,
how often till then I’d lie and steal.

Having thought it
(as Saint Paul wrote)
it was as good as done.