RELIGION Poem: Communion, by Gabriella Raffetto

a dictum of Jesus

Jesus is a woman I eat up like religion;
spoonful by spoonful, I lick my fingers clean.
She tastes just like the Moon.

Celestial, she hangs suspended over man,
none compare to the Midnight’s Mistress, my mystical muse—
Jesus; a woman I eat up like religion

who rages like a rogue, or just a wafer-thin monsoon?
White-capped waverings over her frosted fingers, sugar in every crevice and crater—
Oh, how she tastes; & just like the Moon,

My eye falls upon sweet Mary, dripping like sand
Slipping through my fingers by some heavenly command,
Jesus. Is a woman I eat up like Religion,

Like Mary, but aching; a horizon filled with gloom?
How she wades through waters and wastelands, searching for an absence;
she tears up, when she’s about to consume,

then we tangle in desperate embraces, shipwrecked vessels enter
the dark spaces of my solitude. At night, the stars remind me that
Jesus is a woman I eat up like religion;
Oh, how she tastes just like the Moon.