Buns

I hate the smell
of bakery buns,
the way the mock cream
oozes out of the slit in the middle
like a white cockscomb
or soapy, unsmirched pompadour.

At primary school
I removed the white seam
with the utmost tip of my extended tongue.
Still I could taste
that old-brown-cardboard currant rankness

the sticky, cockroach casing
of hot cross buns at Easter,
like smelling Jesus
if I passed him in the street
or like eating out the inside
of a church.