My Mother's Kitchen

[jdeirmend]

PART I

My mother’s kitchen
has a large chopping block standing
right square in the middle of it

A sacrificial alter, often donned in the
pallid, sacred glow of fluorescence
like a dais raised to Gods unknown

Where we pay homage
with fork and cleaver
not to lord Jesus

Nor the world of light, of sense and sight
that clearing struck in the darkness
of all being, so long ago
by his words of good news

But to mother Earth:
that foul and mysterious creature –
Clymenestra, you would kill your own husband
Jocasta, lay with your own son
and you are that majestic, thrilling, sensual darkness, madam
that slimy churning beneath the world

That secret lurker
in the hearts and loins of all women
and all men

You are the one
I insist, and not without
a tremble

Whom we truly worship when we eat:
after civil prayers, a lip-service
to the Father
are said, “In Jesus’ name . . .”

And, like maddened wolves
with ravishing, eternal hunger
that knows no reason . . .
we feast on flesh again