We do not in our countryniche you at corners,crossroads, highway shrines.But in Karen’s face as she talks of her sonwhose pain will not redeem the world;as Marguerita, whose eldest will notsurvive her; in Sylvie, whose childlearned all his letters in his second yearand by age four had been con

The city suffocates with the smellOf hemp, soaked in blood, everywhere.Hour after hour after hour she tossesFrom one nightmare to another.Her bed sheets, once silveredWith the scent of nard, taste of gall.She dreams she sees her husband, the prefectOf equivocation, leaning over the porticoTrying to

In the stories I return to, people love each otherindirectly. Offering coins, their moonlitfaces. Not receiving too much credit.Like the man at work today who answered“How are you?” with “Blessed.” I thought,that’s not an answer to the question.Afterward, I spent the da

In certain folktales, she appears with Mary,pierced through with the scissors and needlesof girls who worked, forbidden, on Sundays.She is marred with knives, and scarredwith scythes wielded disobediently.I imagine Christ’s gentle hands, healinghis battered Saint, pulling nails from her flesh,

From the Rev. John P. McNamee, a poem for the Christmas season