Bronwen Tate
Two Poems
They took turns making it, offering it, and some were clearly
better at it than others.
Our big freezer out back was full of it, back-up for
emergencies when someone forgot.
Bread is the most immediate offering. The most practical.
When I’d been fasting, my teeth tore into it.
Different seals.
A piece called the lamb.
Bits chipped off in commemoration.
My father made it in the Cuisinart with the chopstick jammed
in the lid to make it work even though it was broken.
Ideally, someone reads the psalms.
After Good Friday, they took the red flowers from the
epitaphion, dried them, and ground them up.
The next batch of prosphora flecked with red.
It is all acted out.
They carry this shroud, and we bow our heads in sorrow, as
we do at Panikhidas.
Even though we know what happens in three days.
Even though we have already begun preparing the red eggs.
We sing of how Joseph of Arimathea asked for the body and
laid it in a new tomb.
Epi means at, over, on, into, after.
Taphos means tomb.
I want to cry. I want to be moved. I want to be somewhere
else when this is over.
Bronwen Tate just received her MFA in Poetry from Brown University. A native of Portland, OR, Bronwen now lives, writes, and bakes strawberry-rhubarb pies in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Word For/Word, Kulture Vulture, Lungful!, and horse less review.