Jennifer Lagier- Three Poems

Lolly’s Story

“God and Dr. Oz saved my life.”

 

Been dragging, exhausted,

can’t keep my eyes open.

Turns out it was a sign.

I’d been distracted

by work, family drama,

not paying attention.

Now the oncologist diagnoses

stage 4, not optimistic.

Surgery, margins marked,

tumor excision.

Thirty days of radiation,

poison pumped through a port,

into my bloodstream.

“It’s a crapshoot,”

he tells me,

“which dies first,

healthy tissue or cancer.”

Been meditating,

praying to God, taking

pills Dr. Oz recommended.

So far, I’m still here,

kicking and complaining.

If I had to guess,

I’d say I am winning.

 

 

 

Confirmation

 

Ironically, it's a nun who

orders mother to purchase

my first pair of high heels,

nylons, the superfluous bra,

rubber straight-jacket girdle.

She tells me the vulnerable priest

needs these reminders to adorn

my pudgy, twelve year old body

so he won't succumb

to overwhelming desire.

 

I stare at sister's drab habit,

imagine life beneath black cloth,

visualize her spartan cell,

untouched breasts, utilitarian panties.

I sit, listen in confusion,

ponder threats of hell

and her Catholic warnings.

 

Mother gleefully chooses

my size 15 tent dress:

two tones of heifer plaid

with immense rhinestone buttons.

I redden, sweat toward adulthood

within tight elastic.

 

When my turn comes to be confirmed,

I stumble forward on command

down the church aisle

dividing our class

into separate genders.

Trembling and filled

with a devout sense of faith,

I kneel before a man wearing skirts,

feel him slapping my face.

 

Previously published in

SLIPSTREAM, No. 18 (May 1998)

 

 

 

Family Dinners

 

God is thinking about me and eating me…Tomaz Salamun

 

During Sunday mass,

we fidgeted on hard pews,

light-headed from fasting,

suffused with delusions

of impending salvation.

 

We bargained with God,

admitted our failures.

With bent heads, knelt,

offered trembling tongues

for sacrificed Christ’s

dry wafer flesh.

 

Family dinners reinforced

the repentance theme:

fried onions and leathery liver,

a hungry child's crown of thorns.

 

Mother’s "eat three bites

or sit all night" rule

taught me to swallow

in obedient silence

everything I was told,

growing glutted, then sick

from the burden of Catholic grace.

 

Later, I tortured myself

for becoming a victim.

Poked a finger down my throat

and rejected it all,

reclaiming control

as I obstinately purged.

 

 

 

Jennifer Lagier is a recovering Catholic, unrepentant snake wrangler and worshipper.