I can’t stop thinking about the woman in New Mexico
who discovered the face of Jesus on a tortilla
and how her husband stopped drinking due to the tortilla,
the parish priest blessed the tortilla
and tried to duplicate the face on his own tortilla.
A miracle and people are still coming to see the tortilla.
They call it “Jesus on a Tortilla”
like a Saturday special in an all-night luncheonette.
We have been so broke lately
if it happened to us
we would eat the tortilla.
We would forget pilgrimages, the AP, the UPI.
Anyway, maybe it would be the proper thing—
to eat the tortilla—
why else would Jesus appear on a tortilla
and not on a chair, a fountain pen,
a classic cashmere sweater.
No, he’s always making the rounds in bread.

It’s like when you go into a bakery and say
I’ll take one of those, and two of these
and three of the little rabbit-earred custard ones.
He must have said: I’ll try a tortilla
in the home of a poor family.
Now I’m checking all my pancakes, my bagels, my buns.
I may have eaten some of the saints and the famous already.
Often after a good meal I’ll get a glow.
There’s no telling who’s being taken in.

Lee Upton