Holy Communion Redux
by Molly Sturdevant
I got a halo on my head and these animal fangs.
-Cynthia Cruz
Strange Gospels
We can talk about it after dinner.
Supper, sure.
There’s already silverware out there, just sit.
I was never bored at mass, that wasn’t the problem.
Just water for me. Yes you’ve mentioned it--
you feel as though your four grown children are scattered
like a broken thread of beads, lost
with our jail time and divorces, couple of crashed cars
and now— this atheist!
This is good, and cheap, so what’s the matter.
No, I wasn’t looking for something less organized.
I like organization just fine. I like ancient things,
myrrh, difficult texts, you know that.
Don’t I fear death then?
Well can you hand me that napkin?
So, I’m very happy with the earth, with endings,
becoming soil again, see? Or stardust maybe,
point is I can’t get behind original sin, the whole
stained souls thing, or fallenness,
so I feel I can’t take communion, for one thing.
More chicken? I don’t know. Look in the pan.
No I am not hiding anything,
I’m middle-aged, please
stop waiting for me to become something.
Isn’t that enough salt? I just mean,
what is so great about a person’s body
that you’d want to take it with you?
Yes, after death.
I can hear her jaw pop while she chews.
Between us, this is a kind of statement.
The crumple of her paper napkin—
tree limbs bent in a storm.
The clink of her fork against the plate—
a sword.
-Cynthia Cruz
Strange Gospels
We can talk about it after dinner.
Supper, sure.
There’s already silverware out there, just sit.
I was never bored at mass, that wasn’t the problem.
Just water for me. Yes you’ve mentioned it--
you feel as though your four grown children are scattered
like a broken thread of beads, lost
with our jail time and divorces, couple of crashed cars
and now— this atheist!
This is good, and cheap, so what’s the matter.
No, I wasn’t looking for something less organized.
I like organization just fine. I like ancient things,
myrrh, difficult texts, you know that.
Don’t I fear death then?
Well can you hand me that napkin?
So, I’m very happy with the earth, with endings,
becoming soil again, see? Or stardust maybe,
point is I can’t get behind original sin, the whole
stained souls thing, or fallenness,
so I feel I can’t take communion, for one thing.
More chicken? I don’t know. Look in the pan.
No I am not hiding anything,
I’m middle-aged, please
stop waiting for me to become something.
Isn’t that enough salt? I just mean,
what is so great about a person’s body
that you’d want to take it with you?
Yes, after death.
I can hear her jaw pop while she chews.
Between us, this is a kind of statement.
The crumple of her paper napkin—
tree limbs bent in a storm.
The clink of her fork against the plate—
a sword.
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Molly Sturdevant is a copy editor and writer, whose prose and poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Orion Magazine, The Dark Mountain Project, The Nashville Review, Little Patuxent Review, Newfound, About Place Journal, x-r-a-y LitMag, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel based on research in trade-union archives. She lives in the Midwest.
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