No Confession, No Mass by Jennifer Perrine

Author:Jennifer Perrine [Perrine, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8032-7723-6
Publisher: Nebraska
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

III

Invocation: The Blessed Girl, after Her Visions and Vows

Your hand to your heart, you knew how to play

the part, to read the faces of your marks,

their belief in your continuous fast,

how you ate nothing but the Eucharist,

but I saw the flour pinched in your fingers,

ragged rind cupped in your palm, your eyes fixed

on the sick, the poor, while your mind, dark dove,

winged toward God, or toward the impure,

the sweet secreted behind a red sheet,

your body pricked by a cartload of thorns,

by his admiring gaze upon your hair —

magnificent, he’d said, twining himself

there — your friar called you his divine heir,

then died, left you wounds you could not undo

except by tearing your tresses, wrenching

them by the roots, beauty shorn for ugly

truth, letting legend replace your labor:

you cried out just once, not from worldly pain

but to name the agony of angels

tying a cord around your waist, twisting,

binding you so tightly they could pull you

to your feet, let you walk away silent,

your penance complete, little spirit left

naked, trembling — of which you’d never speak.

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