Making Sushi

Bamboo mat is cradle and altar,
rice baptised for hours
sits upon Kanji’s nori dust
whipped by air’s high priest.

Artist armed with pallet and oil
rubs wasabi into the spine
like iodine into wounds,
covers the blushing bride
in scented saffron robes.

Lectern and altar groan, crumbled.
You fillet the church, like whale nets,
haunting the cracks, the dark spaces
trapped, in Egypt’s final plague.

Then you ache, spliced into sets.