In Broken Latin: Poems

Feeding Stations of the Cross

Feeding Stations of the Cross I. I consider mailing cottage cheese and grape jello to starving children in vietnam. slap me again for every forkful uneaten at supper, guilty vinyl ripping beneath these beanpole legs. II. If I pray to Clare of Pisa to disappear my waist, maybe she’ll load my sheepish bra with a handful of extra flesh. I’d carry it well. III. Pope Lady Buns Scald milk and sugar Add yeast, flour until soft Punch down Cut into ladies Poke in currants for eyes Let rise IV. while my mother listens to Patsy Cline and mother maybelle Carter, my father screws her blonde friend in the blue trailer. Later, she’ll pop a sugar-free fresca, pour it over ice cream, ask me if I see his pickup swaggering down the road. –  – V. some days when I drink only lemon juice and water, there are seagulls crying in the pipes of the church organ, a raven-black priest feeding me a suet wafer. VI. and some days when I faint, a fat nun finds a crumb of doughnut on her kneeler, tucks it zealously under my tongue. VII. Dry Bones Cookies Cream sugar, butter, nutmeg until light and airy Sprinkle with rosewater Roll into little femurs, fibulae, and clavicles Bake until rock hard VIII. I’m just beginning to locate my soul, and look, I’ve forgotten to fast! Coffee with cream, raisin cinnamon roll, the other nuns drinking weak tea on this sad, sad friday. IX. Virgin Dinner Knots Dissolve yeast in warm water Stir in milk, eggs, flour Beat –  – Let rest Tie into small tight knots X. whenever I kneel, I think of my body as a window, my white habit a curtain covering the view—ample grass, a gangly rockrose, the swing set rusting, childless. XI. my body is a window. the stupid jay stuns itself against me, reflection of mustard seed spilled across a kitchen table. XII. What is God? I ask my dead father in a dream. He hands me a sirloin steak, shrink wrapped in styrofoam—enigmatic bastard. XIII. I’m sick of talking to dead people and the dead are tired of listening to me unload my grocery sacks of affliction. –  – XIV. tell me again that it’s sexy to see a woman eat, sexy when she slurps mussels like a seal, weighty and lean as a spoonful of salted ocean. –  – ...