Tonight's Poet Corner: Risen Indeed

Risen Indeed
by Belinda Roddie

I ate my way through Easter Sunday,
listening to sweet hymnal wet dreams
that caressed both of my inner thighs
with holy water and flat wafers:
The crisp, pink crust of bread

dyed with bad wine, seeping
into each swollen pore, creating
pustules shaped like the pregnant
belly of Ursa Major, snarling over
Christ's crucified carcass of wheat.

You watched me fall asleep before
the celebration was over. Wrappers
once cuddling with buttercreams lay
like shriveled dead skin against my
sticky, sticky fingers, and somehow

you doubted that I could be removed
from my own tomb, complete with
baseball games on the television and
too much whiskey mixed with cider,
the cacophony of my body rising against

the lustful urges of the flesh, sticking
its tongue deep down into my soul's
constricting throat. The gag reflex
was not enough to prevent the resurrection,
and there I was, compromised in all ways

except one: Life, life, life, at its
shallowest, most sexual layer, stripped
away of everything except sugar,
and booze, and fake religion dipped
in chocolate like an unfertilized egg.