St Lucia Recalls Her Conversion
It goes back to the smell of piss
after father used the midden
and the air of lack which soured the fluids of his mind.
Men are more than cold-tongued eels or rabid dogs.
It’s their authority I envied; their claim to knowing
when I didn’t know myself
and wanted to stay that way.
It takes me back to snowballs,
to before one thing led to another and I dared to dream
Saint Agatha, Doorkeeper, open yourself to her
so that she can pass through Dolci and Donne to Dante,
seventh heaven.
I’ve never seen so many butterflies.
Lucia of Syracuse is the patron saint of the blind.When her prayer for a cure for her mother’s illness was granted she rejected her Roman suitor and devoted herself to God. For her pains she had her eyes gouged out.
Page(s) 41
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The