anamnesis: confronting God in the flesh

Listen the Out Loud version of this poem here.

1. a patient’s account
of medical history,
a reiteration of conditions
contracted by mortality,
a form of proud flesh’s
granulation over a wound,
a raised tissue mass
delineating impact to say
here is pain, here
I’m wounded, here
I cannot heal . . .

2. a remembering
of Eucharist,
import of Christ’s passion
on humanity, a yearning
that resurrection
and ascension will apply
to protected boundaries
of woundwood to say healing
to the callus that forms in me,
my cells lignifying
with habitual rigidity . . .

3. a remembering from
previous existence
as an equine reaction
to pain or irritation
when head and neck
torque to investigate
sudden disquiet, to say
how, why, and can we
re-member what happens
in the flesh when
God and we come to be . . .

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