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Vigil

Our Lady of Scapulars, we carry you around / like credentials, like disgrace, we suffer
this insufferable heat and your packaged spirit’s / smothered by the reek of our sweat—how much closer / must we be?

Poetry, poetry | Poetry Tuesday, poetry
August 25, 2020

Our Lady of Scapulars, we carry you around
like credentials, like disgrace, we suffer
this insufferable heat and your packaged spirit’s
smothered by the reek of our sweat—how much closer
must we be? We herd ourselves up the mountain
so many of us we’re shadowless, we’re over-awed, hours into
a vigil we’ve kept throughout our lives we see nothing
but the sun blotch into its embarrassments.
Mother of Relentless Charity
give what you’ve given freely, we can’t think
beyond the rising nausea, one of us
feels less, while others, more, and several just want their boredom
appeased—you ought to divine who among us
deserves the most, and how soon.
Consoler of the Inconsolable
be true to what we’ve named you, we’re locked
inside our bodies, like dirt under our nails
we scrape our hunger off us and hope
for the best. By this we mean we’re impatient, we can’t
can’t keep paying for blessed water
without receiving something more profound
than rain. We’ve been told gratitude’s
the one correct response to living. But we’ve lived
enough, how can you free us of how we know it?
Woman Who Makes Us Wait
Under a Cloudless Sky, anger like silence
has settled on us: if through
the visible shimmers the invisible
we see that though you exist, like light
you add nothing except yourself. We don’t care
for one another, we’re not all of us neighbors
not all of us envy or envy
the same people, we’re not all of us blind, we’re wrong
we delight in singling out those who are, we’re each of us
dumb and so ask the questions you’ve made us ask.
Virgin of the Withering Tree
if you won’t better us, better at least our known hopes. Surpass us.