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

MY THERAPIST ASKS ME TO EXPLAIN

MY RECURRING DREAMS (I).

From behind the grill dad can’t see what happens in 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 out pink 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 Girl

is first in line. Each pebble she placed in me worms

its way deeper, eating me from the inside out.

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.