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if this series continues, I'm going to start getting gigs at Christian colleges. really. up next: Marguerite Porete to Hillary Rodham Clinton. or maybe Oprah.

Saint Catherine of Siena to Mary-Kate Olsen

what god stole your hunger? who demands this reduction
to vertebrae? it’s a specific treason, a case worth losing,
nobody can hear you with fingers or sticks between your lips,
nobody loves you in the bathroom, everyone’s in the kitchen
again, this is my body, broken for you, take and eat

the appearance of bones is not a miracle of the flesh
(take and eat) what do your visions say? who
marries you in the dream, Christ slipping a ring
on my thin second finger, my shorn hair all over
the floor, gold for gold, I was six when he first
came for me, who insists on this full-body stigmata,

how long have you been paying this penance? are you ready
to die for this? martyrdom’s a pretty notion until you’re nose
to nose with it and nothing to be done, the body rejecting water,
salt, fish, when you realize the devil’s the one who wants
you small, who told you the pus of a cancer was wine, said

sip, swallow, this is my blood, transubstantiation in three
degrees, when you have given your good body to a lie
Mary, when your bones turn to whispers they will bury you
under a stone that did not ask to be a stone, we do not ask
to be but we are and to live, Mary, to swear
on everything holy that these bodies are not vessels

but gifts, that’s the trick, to be an altar and not
another sacrifice, for what are you atoning? who is your
eucharist? I made men believe. brought a condemned man
to faith and caught his severed head in my hands, beguine
or not you have hands, a throat, the world doesn’t need

another dead-thin girl, your suffering is not special, offered up
to magazine covers and lip gloss endorsements, thousands
flocked to confession after I preached in public squares, what
are you winning? my mistake was believing the body
meant nothing, yours the opposite – Mary meaning bitter,
Katherine meaning pure, Christ and I died at 33, anvils

for the world’s beatings, vessels of the world’s sins, glue
your brittled bones into the face of a god who bids you
eat, our bodies broken into bread at your feet, chicory,
water lily, do this for you, rosemary, asphodel, do this
in remembrance of me.

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