wildscape. literary journal

The Penultimate Supper
by Connor Donovan

This was before the room filled 
for the photo op. 
We sat around pretty as sin, pulling 
nicotine pouches, 
tonic & gins from the neat gluttony. 
We tucked greed 
between gum & cheek in place of need. 
This was when 
my God was still proud as a poor man. 
Poor, but a proud 
son & lover. The river was still water, 
wine was wine. 
We spoke the accent of addiction 
with our ancestors’ 
same repentance. Heaven slept around 
us in bedsheets thin 
as forgetting. Thin as their shadows. 
I’ve always been
self-reliant. I’ve always scavenged for my own 
dependencies, so when 
he swallowed his bite to ask Do you ever write
love poems? I chose 
to hear him in that joking tone reserved 
only for the parts 
of speech that you refuse to recognize as truth. 
Then he ended the meal 
with a prayer about loving thyself even when 
you’re limp. This was 
back when I thought I had quit my God, 
when I was going 
to be a writer, but as everyone else, I sat 
stuffing my mouth 
with the muddle of myself I had brought 
to the potluck. 
I’d pit out the bitterness as if from a stone 
fruit, then keep 
the whole weight of the stone.

about the author // Connor Donovan