And it came to pass that Zion was not,
for God received it up into his own bosom;
and from thence went forth the saying,
ZION IS FLED.
—Moses 7:69
Sunday morning gone, most of the afternoon. Relentless
the custard sun fills our kitchen nigh to bulge
with brassy light. Butter knife in hand, I hunch and chip
dried snot and strawberry off the worn kitchen table
to use it for the sacrament. If the Holy Ghost visits, I think,
he’d probably prefer a snot-free table.
This is round two, another cold spring week
hocus-pocussing a stucco tract house into a temple,
the pockmarked wooden table promoted to altar, stand-ins
for our yellowbrick chapel down the road
shuttered and locked thanks to people eating bats or
because of a Communist plot or laboratory leak or
the four horsemen of the apocalypse
spotted yesterday loping across the Bonneville Salt Flats
or all of the above.
Do it again, my son says, his eager eyes on the bread
and water, squinting against the glare. Like last time.
How long until the novelty wears off, I wonder?
Like last time, he says. A greening poplar tray holds
a white slice of Granny Sycamore and four shot glasses—
cut crystal from Deer Valley, gilt onyx from San Antonio,
a frosted Lagoon roller coaster, and the Anaheim
Mighty Ducks hockey mask reflected in tap water—
bleached eucharists all. So I kneel on the hard floor,
frockless priest begging God to bless, sanctify,
transform this bread and water and me
into more than this. Always, the prayer reads, verb
and refrain. I pass the tray to my wife, the children,
then drape it in a piece of cut shirt.
We try a song, another prayer. I should do more, I think,
as the children leave and melt into the television. I should try that verb,
place it on the table of my heart
instead of on this cracking mess where I can already see
I missed a strawberry. Tonight, I will pray:
please always my son’s brain,
his hands, so that he will not hurt his sister.
Always this little girl so that she can learn to speak, always this family
from COVID. If this house can become a chapel
and water can become wine and mud can become sight,
always my migraines into something like air or laughter.
Always the bills, the settling foundation, the radon. Like the last time
you alwaysed, and the time before that, and every time before that
because that’s how You are, and I know it, even sometimes
when I feel like I don’t. Please, like last time, always
and forever. Amen.
Jeffrey Tucker works in the Church History Department on communications projects with the Church History Library. Previously, he was an English and creative writing professor at Brigham Young University, Hampton University, and The University of Southern Mississippi, among other far-flung places. He is the author of Kill February (Sage Hill, 2015), which was the recipient of the Powder Horn Prize for a poet’s first full-length collection of poetry.His poems have appeared in Hinchas de Poesia, Measure, South Dakota Review, Chariton Review, and elsewhere.
