Communion in the Church of Sally Bassett
By Yesha Townsend
June 29th, 2026
all of June is a broken loaf
a sacrament
a baccanale
the next morning we don’t remember so we eat
someone’s mama made the macaroni
all that body
& we drink
till we’re full hot
someone’s uncle made the swizzle by
a blood moon
we gather: ratsbane, manchioneel root, white toade
for an offering a praxis we mime
over a hundred and a hundred and a hundred years
repeating the liturgy like a child’s song an alphabet
learned to say other words
we forget this mass but blink into the sun to dance
to bruck up wine up
in remembrance of
our sun, burned in full light an undeserving ghost
in summer we supper in supplicant
praise and fail
raise ourselves to be set upon
without covering without prayer
our furnace filled with spirit
we unmake the holy
discomfort ourselves in warmth
call the sun out in vain
Yesha Townsend is a Bermudian writer and English lecturer at the Bermuda College. Her work has been published or featured in Bermudian, Caribbean and British spaces, notably, The Bermudian Magazine, The Bermuda Anthology of Memoir & Creative Non-Fiction, Poui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing, The Wolverhampton Literary Festival 2021, MOKO: caribbean arts and letters, and The Bermuda Biennial 2022.
She’s in a band called DONNA. And a duo called ICARUS. Her writing explores grief, identity and love through the lens of the Black Bermudian and Caribbean experience, she writes of home, of hurricanes, of Bermudian history, mythology, and folklore.