God Hates Hungarian Sausage and Baseball

On Sunday mornings my father and I would skip
the morning mass
and show off our finest church clothes
on the walk to the Paulina Street Meat Market.
After all, mom was stone dead and we didnt
go to church anymore anyways.
Jesus is for suckers
Pops always said.

All dolled up in his grey suit, he bought the usual-
fare, a pound of smoked Hungarian sausage links and three
enormous rib eyes, all wrapped carefully in stiff white paper.
My father would drag me down
Sherman Boulevard with all the speed and determination of the roaring "El"
passing above us, screeching by on twisted steel tracks, to Wrigley Field
where we sat in the old wooden bleachers
just behind the worn third base line, nibbling
Hungarian sausages.  Lying through his perfect white teeth, he told me
again, of how he caught Hank Aaron's last home run ball
twenty years ago in this very spot.

On Sunday mornings
we would walk home, past St. Aloysius Catholic Church
at the very precise moment that mass would end, and sneak into the stream
of church-goers as they filed out.  This week's hell fire and damnation
wiped away with a few Hail Mary's and a nickel or two
sent to save the pagan babies.
Pops, shaking the pastor's hand, congratulated
him on a moving sermon.  Under his breath, he'd mumble, Fuck
this Jesus shit but we still went, every Sunday, suckers,
and pretended to need salvation.