By Michael Pontacoloni

I watch him drop from the pinch-thin slot
above the dishwasher, scale the tube-steel legs
of the baker’s rack, skirt the sink’s slick edge
and grow brazen: sortie over the runner
by noonlight, champion of bagged bread,
banana, pizza crust. At night I trap him
with a paper-towel tube and peanut butter,
whisper apologies and name him Jeff,
then knowing nothing of care release him
into a brush pile at the edge of the park.
I hope against owls and foxes, pray
that he finds the dark brownstone basement
of Saint Joseph’s Church and lives forever
on the unblessed wafers loose in cabinets.
At the rehearsal of my first communion
Father Las Heras declared them worthless,
tossed handfuls at us like tiny frisbees,
slid them across the floorboards where he
crushed them under his old black Reeboks,
and spun one neatly into the chest pocket
of my first white button-up dress shirt.

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Michael Pontacoloni’s poems appear in Southern Review, Cincinnati Review, Hopkins Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. He has received awards and support from the Sewanee Writers Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.