Anorexia Mirabilis: Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi In the lower choir where my sisters kneel on this rough wood, restless, black-beaded, lost in reveries of glowing oven stones, the coarse seed bread and churned butter that will soon break the long night of their fast, I wait on nothing but you, Lord, unsteady as I am, slow-pulsed and languorous beneath the weight of my patched woolen mantle. Still young, my monthly blood has halted like all hope of the damned. I am mother solely to desire ravenous as a coliseum beast and I will rise only when the gold-throated bells have beckoned You and I brush my lips against the priest’s warm fingers, swallow You who deigns to enter me white as a winding sheet before its terrible commission. You stagger me like plaited thorns pressed to my crown where this white wimple bends its nimbus arc. You have inscribed the reliquary of my heart with a secret to be read only when I am laid open on the surgeon’s cold stone table. The Word Was Made Flesh and dwelt within me. O, Love who descends in a garland of fire, bloodied robe spilling off the shoulder, off the scourged hip, I am damp as a new bride to behold the smooth cursive that arrows from your muscled waist to the rag they hung above your sex for the sake of modesty. Unworthy though I am, a virgin with a harlot’s name, I beseech You not for death, but agony, not light, but doubt’s brute darkness. Render me desolate and hollow as a midnight nave. Countenance the cloister cupboards demon-gaped to illumine glittering jars of late summer preserves. Conjure a years-long ache in my belly, wolf sister to the bone whip that flays me. no matter this starved-drunk equilibrium, the yellowed vellum of my skin, these bones gone brittle as pendant ice. I remain renunciate for Your name’s sake. I consent to nothing but the unleavened moon that conceals Your broken glory. O Lord, I beg You, shatter me with promises of the feast that is to come. Frank Paino Frank Paino’s poems have appeared in a variety of literary publications, including: Crab Orchard Review, Catamaran, North American Review, World Literature Today, Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, The Briar Cliff Review, Lake Effect and a number of anthologies. Frank’s third book, Obscura, was published by Orison Books in 2020. His first two volumes of poetry, The Rapture of Matter and Out of Eden were published by Cleveland State University Press. Frank has received a Pushcart Prize, The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature, and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. His website is: https://www.frankpaino.net
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
This site uses cookies. Continuing here means you consent. Thank you. Join us: Facebook and Bluesky
February 2025
|