The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Always

Written by
Sal Cetrano

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URL: http://prmlr.us/mr13cet5

A fallen priest on a shuttle flight padding the holes in his resume looks down and sees Manhattan as Babel built on bedrock and whistling in the wind. He’d ingested descriptions of Gomorrah and vowed not to lie with the swine, an earnest but dubious intention, like a boy with webbed hands forswearing masturbation. Propped in confessional, coin-slot gypsy working Wakefield’s flock without effect, his mechanical arm allotted dispensation for sins that made his vitals ache, his collared understanding crave the light. How to counsel salesmen on fidelity, virgins on the roots of desire? Other voices had announced his calling, but the scream that tore the darkness was his own. So, in the Oak Room of the Plaza, surrounded by dowagers waiting opulently on death, his mind turns elegant perversities: he is naked, bearer of bread and fishes, plying a gospel of swift return. Offered a sanctum with mirrors, he will say, it is always the living who are saved.