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Epub ISBN: 9781473562370
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VINTAGE
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Copyright © Andrew McMillan 2018
Cover photograph © Lily Richards
Andrew McMillan has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Jonathan Cape in 2018
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
for Ben
I would be born, and I would bear. Amen!
The Acts of John
I know a lot! I know about happiness! I don’t mean the love of God, either: I mean I know the human happiness with the crimes in it.
Even the happiness of childhood.
Harold Brodkey
it be right that the men who have benefited us should be called gods
The Acts of John
I would flee, and I would stay. Amen
The Acts of John
tonight I started walking back to you father
it was meant to be a stroll but then I started
walking faster father I started chanting all
the names of all the men I ever went to bed
with father my thighs were burning and my feet
were heavy with blood but I kept the pace and chants
of names up father listed them to fenceposts
and the trees and didn’t stop and started getting
younger father and walked all night till I was home
just a spark in your groin again and told you not
to bring me back to life told you I repented
every name and had freed them of me father
it will take a good ten minutes for them to stop
breathing as heavy as they are for the burning
in their lungs to dampen for the mud from the yard
to be trodden down into the hairbrown carpet
one boy clutches his chest as though trying to keep
his bones from bursting out later he will ask me
how many tattoos I have whether I have one
on my bum whether he can look to verify
my denial such innocence such freedom in asking
for the body of another I point him back
to the page there will be time for him for them all
to learn of the body’s curve into awkwardness
to find their way into the rules and the lessons
they will come to know by heart once some schoolgirls
of ten or eleven in my primary drew
red crayon down a tampon and left it hanging
half out of one of their schoolbags in the cloakroom
trying to rush themselves to adolescence
the girls in this class are huddled in the corner
having already learnt they should be suspicious
of new men their necks seem longer than the boys’
they’ve learnt to hold themselves they’ve learnt what small
words from them can do there was a storeroom
in my primary school and if we were chosen
to tidy away mats after PE lessons
me and another boy would try out wrestling moves
on each other the last time I remember it
we were both laid out on the mats after a slam
my body over his cheap shorts almost touching
and I felt a warmth nothing wet or sexual
something like light spreading across a cold surface
and a small part of the back corridor
of my mind is still lit by that moment his eyes
on mine for longer than they should have been
seeing in them the whole incident the grappling
amongst the quoits and plastic footballs the fall
onto the mats the staledinner breath the knowing
then of what it was of what it would be soon