opulent fat immaculate

XV

mute mammary, my cup is empty.

nothing but empty

for hour after hour day after day.

raised Catholic 

my once wanted to be a nun self  

thinks of Mary,

pregnant by God

or some anonymous Roman

occupier toughing her
at a well,

i ache to prostrate my bloated,

self, collapse

at her plaster feet and entreat

anything resembling milk. 

i could be a new Lourdes, 

liquid rich and miraculous

and I can leave by my pathetic

prosthetic pump

and swim away letting

rivers. 

i'm alone—i’m

not in some French

grotto pasting myself

with mud.  i’m so God

damned dry in this antiseptic

place i don’t even feel

the tingled let-down, the thin gilded

liquid drip down my nipple.  still

somewhere on the edge with Mary

i grope my clay

dissolving, and that thick ring

of colostrum

the size of a Jefferson nickle is all

i want.

opulent fat, immaculate,
i touch it
to my lips.  what else, since
you're sedated
ninety miles away,
to do with it?