two poems
by Terry Trowbridge
Koala backpack
“Because koalas are bisexuals,”
you replied to me,
putting on your koala-shaped backpack.
Quietly, I tried to imagine
the practical difference between
shibboleth and trope.
And, practically, I wondered
if it would carry two water bottles,
our books, or just your book
like the book where
Frans de Waal asks, Are We Smart Enough
to Know How Smart Animals Are?
From now on I will carry that book
in my hand, emblematic, heraldic, standing
behind your totem backpack’s gaze
at a crowded crosswalk.
Intersections and allegories.
Sure Faith
They promised never to forgive us
for the time we replaced
the communion wine with vinegar
and we laughed in the back row
at the first few faces
and laughed at how the next few
couldn’t bring themselves to interrupt the priest
and laughed at the next few
who were too young to know it was wrong
and the next few who
had tears because we ruined their only
taste of hope and their only meal in public in their old age
and then laughed about the woman
who drooled and blushed when it touched
her so-clean white shirt
and laughed at the ones who will
never forgive us for tampering with sacred things
and never forgive us for the last one
who spat the blasphemous parody
on the altar and the surprised priest’s shoes.
They promised never to forgive us.
All of them except for the one who
was so beautiful when they drank it,
who tasted the same perfect sip
they knew would be waiting for them every time.
That one forgave us.
Photo of Terry Trowbridge
BIO: Terry Trowbridge is a writer and farmer from Canada. He thanks the Ontario Arts Council for funding poetry during the polycrisis which apparently is endless and fractalated.