MY THERAPIST ASKS ME TO EXPLAIN MY RECURRING DREAMS (I & III).

MY THERAPIST ASKS ME TO EXPLAINMY RECURRING DREAMS (I).   

From behind the grill dad can’t see what happensin the playhouse.
An oven for mud pies. The place we ate live ants. 

Neighbor Girl guarantees they taste like lemon.
A gravel table, the place for bodies laid outpink and raw, 

pants pulled down to ankles. A place for memories
that become mythology with each dismissal. 

A body weighted down by rocks won’t float,
even buoyed up by corpse bloat.  

In the yard, Neighbor Girl’s dad chats with my dad.
They stab fingers throw cellophane wrappers  

to get at the raw cow or chicken beneath. Blood blooms,
the wound cauterized on the grill. The neighborhood kids  

huddle close, eager for their pound of flesh. Neighbor Girlis
first in line. Each pebble she placed in me worms  

its way deeper, eating me from the inside out.
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MY THERAPIST ASKS ME TO EXPLAIN MY RECURRING DREAMS (III).

Each piece of Christ’s body
is glazed with oil 

from fingertips
of members who take 

first flesh: the balding Bishop,
his counselors in white 

shirts shaped like empty
shopping bags, a toddler 

whose mother, dressing five
others, left his hands unwashed. 

When I think of faith,
I think of germs, particles 

of goodness passed
from person to person, 

‍alma influenza in each sacrament.  

Twelve-year-old boys
huddle in sacred coat closets, rip
12-grain bread with their bare, 

too-strong hands.
I have never once 

trusted a boy’s hands,
not even scrubbed clean.
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