One Every 24 #12

The Whipper Gripper

We called him Whipper Gripper
or sometimes Wacker Jacker
trapped as we were in the dorm
dead nights of that all-boys Catholic
boarding school. He was doing
what all boys will now and forever do
only to get busted by some Brother
surprising into his room one blank
after school afternoon when the rest
of us were at practice, some Brother
in his swinging cassock-skirt and rope
knotted belt with the professed keys
to everything, some Brother catching this
kid naked but for a cowboy hat and boots
doing his version of every boy-man ever
the same some Brother who kept panties
under his own pillow with a mouth
big enough to spread around a false sin
that could dribble its way down the ranks
into our minds where we would name
and make hilarious mockery of our scape
goat to hide what shouldn't have been
our own shame.