Interruptus
I confess I was circumcised at birth
Without my consent,
The enforced loss of an innocence
I never knew I had to give,
For a sin that I was born with rather than did.
I am not actually angry about this.
Nevertheless the blood of the male spilt as circumfession
In acknowledgement of the mother’s menstrual stream and
Charon’s coin for crossing the Styx.
The ritual deflowering of a male’s hymen.
A quarter inch of pupice becomes
a halo of skin.
the blushing bride’s garter
Removed to unveil the glans penis
In all its forbidden gory
The dickhead revealed
the snake looking for the garden of Eden
and its original sin
The boy says, you don’t have one of these,
The girl replies, my mum says with one of these
I can get one of those anytime
If this is the rite of passage
I have already paid at the door
Terence Rissetto
I am of Maori descent, with Danish, Italian and English thrown in the mix. My background includes a degree in Existential Philosophy, working as a psychiatric nurse in Australia, and a career as a public servant. I woke up from a self-induced coma of 25 years when I heard a Bukowski reading and thought it was Kevin Spacey before he became Lester Burnham. My work attempts to show there are other realities and other ways of looking at them. You can reach me at oystercatcher210@gmail.com.
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