4/2026 (c)
In missionary school we were told
Adam and Eve had sex—
that is why God evicted them from the garden
though I was never sure how they could
populate and subject the earth without it.
All forty of us in the commune—celibates
male and female, sworn
and re-born virgins—
eschewing kissing, intimacy, romance
except for the six married team leaders—
told us
that Satan enters the soul through used genitals,
access points that couldn’t be plugged.
Satan worming up through secretions,
embedding his tail in the uterus,
putrid whispering into our ears
told us
marriage was a church
and fornication ruined the foundation.
Better to be like the early church fathers:
Ammonius searing his flesh
with a flame-red iron,
Old Pachon placing asps onto the scrotum.
I found that furtive, unfinished
hand-jobs from Merzog kept me safe
from the ultimate sin—
my pleasure.
