Poems

VI. Communion Bread
or
Give ‘em the good stuff

Leave behind your round wafers
those small discs flattened and lifeless, for
thin and crisp have no place at this table.
Also exclude your centimeter cubes,
your carefully sliced white wonderbread,
airfilled and meaningless.
Those are for the religious.
Those are mere ritual.

Instead take out a loaf pan.
Brim-fill it with finest flour,
with heavy cream and sweet nectar, with
yeast so it rises balloonlike
above and over in the oven.
Let it bake to brown as suede.
With your hands, tear it generously
so each piece overflows,
knowing no confinement.
And when they come to this table,
and eat the doughy mouthful,
their tongues will probe each spongy crevice,
each seed and grain, and
they will ruminate and
rest in this lavish, hearty, honey love,
and taste long the brazen bounty,
blatant, abundant, rife
promised life.