HOSTING by Zadie McGrath

I’ll tell you what dinner can be. / We ate soup and salad and chocolate I’ll show you / like this

there’s a trick to it 

it’s default / dogma / diligence. 

If our speech patterns stay the same / if 

the curls of our decibels 

reverberate the same way / if 

the half step yields / to the strongest resolution / then 

why do we default / to dissonance? 

I’ll tell you. / We plagiarized our own / old / conversations we crafted altars / to the absent / dinner guests 

in a show / of our due diligence 

let me remind you. 

This poem is the jittering line between powerful / personal / confessional this poem cannot get away from me / even though it’s still unwritten cannot get enough of me 

cannot be / enough of me / to be / enough 

sustenance / for someone nonexistent.

So yes / I’ll tell you / how we ate that night / how we drank fluid through a feeding tube / as if it were communion wine / yes / I will tell you / how we aspired / to resurrection. 

This is a poem contrived of the remnants / I won’t claim 

to parse it with meaning like plucking pomegranate seeds 

I won’t tell you / to love it. 

This poem will not divulge 

for you / this poem is locked / away 

from you / this poem is a needle 

for mending as a series of puncture marks. 

Yes / I’ll tell you / if you really want to know / but I have to ask you / where do you get the rest of your meals / when it’s been four years / and no one / is cooking you offerings anymore?