-for Peter Pieronini in Purgatory-

The alter-boys at Holy Rosary Church

were not sexually abused.

Old-man Father Pannoni was a quiet study

with a sweet smile and stinging backhand

to the wise-cracking mouth.

His predecessor, Father Diafario was a young,

regular guy kind of priest, a Hollywood priest,

a Pat O’Brien type who rationalized that his presence alone

would be enough to save the Eastside kids

from the older hoodlums who’d slip us
a couple of cold quarts of Bohemian Beer out the side door
next to the Bocce alleys

of the Marconi Club, the neighborhood watering hole
on Bedford Street.

My uncles drank inside then played the alleys

and my grandfather did the same before them.

The fat, cigar-smoking DiCarlo twins took the bets.

Drunk as skunks, all of them, the wine-filled old

and beer-bloated young, played with steady hands

and dropped a light kiss on the mouth of the pallino.

This was a sight to see.

Diafario was awkward in sports.

Especially basketball, palming the dribble

with annoying slaps of a flat hand.

We’d open the lanes for him.

He jumps two inches from the blacktop

landing flat-footed while the ball simply

goes up and down nowhere near the hoop.

It was ugly.

At the Bocce alleys,
the Italians are patient with time on their hands,

like planets revolving around their Sun. 

                                   

                                            Quequechan