JON RICCIO

Tumor, Parents, Gospel-Went

We sat in the crying room at St. Monica
interpreting Malchizedek through brick.

The epistle barely homily, Dad sugaring
Sunday till it was psalm caffeine.

They missed my First Communion,
Mom’s performance at work rewarded

with rafting trip—God’s gorge their second
honeymoon, so grandparents oversaw

that weekend, travel accompanied by Cool-Whip
containers holding a Chex Mix more rustic

and embroidered suitcases, Europe unzipped
for shoehorn and shaving kit. My parents returned

with a ceramic mountain man. Stein animals
corralled his beard, heaven a shelved throat.

Today, my prayers are keep Dad in remission
and Mom from senility’s chisel, every murder

mystery library trip lassoing her sharpness.
May it respond to large print. Midnight our last

Mass, Bethlehem a syringe drawing pathologies
out of poinsettias. Liquid in my father’s nephrostomy

matched the pew’s cushions. Mom’s scarf, a forgetter’s
innertube. Memory have faith: red foil means rejoice.

Dad’s Cancer Through the Letter B

Brochures on glandless-ness,
copy editor splicing body cavity.

Benny, the biohazard truck driver.
Friend of seventy years. His med-school son
phones our landline, presses
pound for ureter substitute.

Broken, the suitcase my mother threw at him.
These days she shuts the curtains

by hand. Why destroy
a house drawstring first?
Dad’s thread count, half-alive fabric.

Braganini, another Italian, the town tile baron.
We tried the Sons & Daughters of Italy.
A pie crust made from hamburger.

Basic cutouts (seasonal)—
tape goes over Frankenstein’s
bolts: presto, the awning’s corpse.

Basilica worship. The priest’s homily
chastises gum litterers whose byproducts

blaspheme pews. Terminal or thurible—
the votives’ spearmint smell.
Christendom industrial-strength

measured in a set of Holland cereal
bowls. Amsterdam, NY, not
the Netherlands, he tells a prostate

that can’t tell tulip from Turin.
I hope Jesus makes good

on that Shroud and think tanks
trust antigen isotopes.

Breadwinner eats focaccia special-delivered
from the deli three hours and a catheterization east,
his fingers basiled Atlases to the globe of a bocce set.

Jon Riccio is a queer poet living in Mississippi. He is the author of the chapbooks Prodigal Cocktail Umbrella and Eye, Romanov. His full-length collection Agoreography is forthcoming from 3: A Taos Press.