A New Poem

I Took First the Bread

 I Took First the Bread

Even in the long longing 
to be my own ghost, all sinew
and vanishing, I never 
knew what hunger was, only 
the same mundane gnaw, the same 
humdrum cold of privation. Years 
haggard and akimbo in the glass, palpating 
bones for their prominence,
a devotion to the meager and diaphanous.

When You found me I asked what You wanted:
I want you to eat at the fruits of my table.
And I came to learn 
of famine’s savage offense, what 
had truly been taken from me. The crops 
burned, the fields salted, nothing 
left but straw and maggots. I was 
bewildered and ravenous. Never 
had I witnessed such abundance. 
I took first the bread, 
then the wine, the living blood.

Then the dates and wild honey. The garlic
and mustard. Locusts, fish and cucumbers. 

I slump at your table confounded, stretching
my orphan hand towards your banquet.

-Kristen McHenry