Kristina Andersson Bicher

Communion
 
 
Yes, I will take home the meeting bread,
 
though the conference tablers deemed it
an unfit baguette.
 
Cluster up the strewn,
the ossified and fluorescent.
 
Bring slices back to loaf, foiling
along soft curves. You may know
 
everything of hardship but nothing
of mine. I may give the bread to him
 
who says yes. For now I revise
its origin story, place it back inside
 
its custom sleeve and then a sturdy sack.
Bring it home. Carry it on the train,
 
cross bridges, amber city lights and windows buried
in wisteria. Take it home like
 
no one’s baby. This colossal hunger
to feed him.

Author: Kristina Andersson Bicher

Kristina Andersson Bicher is the author of Heat, Sob, Lily (MadHat Press, 2025), She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again (MadHat Press 2020), and Just Now Alive (2014), as well as the translator of Swedish poet Marie Lundquist’s full-length collection I walk around gathering up my garden for the night  (Bitter Oleander Press 2020). Her poetry appears in literary journals including AGNI, Ploughshares, Hayden’s Ferry, and Narrative.  Her translations and nonfiction have appeared in The Atlantic, Brooklyn Rail, Harvard Review and others.

Plume: Issue #111 November 2020