Audition

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When I see friends sprinting to the altar, their legs
broken and fallen on the carpet before the cross, 
I thank you for the work done 
to their lives. Some shake uncontrollably, 
others wail—a long, languorous note
as if the soul is prying open the flaccid
shell of their bodies and given utterance. 
When they lay hands over me, faces wet
with divine recognition, I try to feel you churning,
gasping, in the centre of my chest
like a zygote feeding and growing on its 
mother’s blood. Are there people
unaccounted by your grandiose 
universe plans, left out and put away
at the spark of creation? I see my friends,
so sure of salvation they can die 
contented at twenty-one, how valiantly 
your call is answered, how fiercely they 
claimed places at your table. I will
or will not know 
why you made me this way. I take my place 
in pews of austere wood, a stranger let in
on charity, left to do the dirty work.

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Communion 

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Standing and facing the table with the book and cross,
I don’t know if my limbs could afford it,
or what I should be asking, mired 
in the swarm of sinners. Lifting
an arm, its fist and fingers, and a 
wafer at the end of it, quiet 
as a baby’s sallow iris, this could be 
the one action I cannot get right, 
lifting and praying, getting-prayed-for, 
like the one irreconcilable motion of the
human body. But at the month’s 
rebirth I would still linger, 
in its corridor of second chances, trusting 
it will lead me back into myself, 
my own fabled kingdom. Can no one 
be without a place? Only disciples 
survive on his memory, only their 
tongues would reel from the welding of flesh and 
blood in a mouth, the wafer crumpled
for swallowing, and I am eating 
as they ate, and drank, and met again.

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Trinity 

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When she feels one isn’t enough for bargaining, 
or if the task is so wildly magnificent 
she assumes independence to be insincerity,
my sister and I troop to her room, back-up soldiers,
kneeling together on the bed where her 
body perseveres, lifeless, at night. The words
come unnatural to me, tiredly graveling 
over my mouth, each vowel 
hardened from the clay of my lips, as if
painfully sculpted for the air to receive. Then 
it is my sister’s turn, sounds pouring
off her light, cavernous body and 
the largesse of her youthful heart 
as easy as talent. I wonder what
makes her so genuine around people,
even the ones we live with, or 
especially the ones who have brought us
violently into this world. I seek 
out her tiny, iridescent heart
like a vow, pressing it to mine 
as my forehead now lies
seared to the thumbs of my clenched hands. When my
mother speaks, her voice easing off 
to surround us whole, all I see in the mineral dark
is a three-pointed star, a diadem 
of faith, made with pliable metal
limbs of mother, sister, self, 
our heads pointing like compasses 
to the hollowed core of a soul, of souls 
that ache after a family.

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Author's Note:

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These poems were first published in Scattered Vertebrae (Math Paper Press, 2013).