Ave Marie, drowned unicorns,
and prayers to the oatmeal goddess 

I don't know when I began to
pray to the oatmeal goddess because she's
not like Jesus-- she's not like
rapture or forty-day flood
or drowned unicorns or 
wiping lips off a wine 
cup of blood--
She waits quiet in a white bowl
like knee-singing 
Ave, Ave Ave Maria 
Sing like Aves like 
white bird like red candle--
like purple robe altar--
like lamb blood welcome mats 
and honey locus dinners--
She waits to 
give birth-- loud and unafraid
in the mouthpiece of a microwave
-- pew-bruise
hips-- 
She's just Ave Maria 
She's never been gold but
she has been naked just like
all of us-- she's been
maple and brown sugar in between
her toes-- she's walked to
burn her lips on another rim
of a cup of her father's blood--
She curled into herself
and waited as a fetus 
in a white bowl-- lay in oats
-- microwave
for 40 seconds and forty nights
and eat 
with a soup spoon-- dinosaur egg
mother and cream peach pew knees--
incantation circles around a bowl--
Ave, Ave, Ave 
Ave oatmeal, Ave eat me, Ave 
I can eat again and I tongue of fire--
And I Ave Maria
In herself she grew cranberries
sewed the blueberry thicket
where I ate my palms purple
and naked 
and planted mustard seeds in the rocks--
The white birds grow in place
of babies--from the cranberries 
made me a believer in kneeling
in front of microwaves for rebirth--
I wash my hair in her raisin seed soil--
The oatmeal goddess is sneaky.
She doesn't tell you to pray
she gives you a tongue
and uses it to sing her body
naked and as beautiful as
an empty mirror-- my goddess gives
me penance in the form of mustard
seeds-- washes my match-scarred forearms
in oatmeal and tells me that we
all have to curl into 
bowls and grow white birds in the fire--
that we all are naked
we all are Ave Maria
Wipe our feet on lamb-blood door
mats-- say our prayers in packets
of maple-apple-crisp-peach-walnut-sugar
kneel before a microwave and pray by accident--
pray haphazard-- pray naked and empty mirror--
pray to wipe away our lips from cups
father blood-- father who drowned
the unicorns-- Ave Maria 
who planted the blueberries
and taught me to kneel.